DUBAI // A method increasingly used by drug smugglers – swallowing liquid cocaine in condoms – will not get past Dubai Customs’ technology and expertise, its director says.
Interpol said last week that more West African and Asian gangs are using the technique on drug carriers to evade detection.
But Ibrahim Al Kamali, director of passenger operations at Dubai Customs, said his staff were alert to it and ready for anyone suspected of drug trafficking.
“Drug mules use this technique to avoid being inspected or being delayed through the inspection process,” Mr Al Kamali said.
“They believe this form of smuggling drugs will not be detected. But Dubai airports are equipped with highly developed scanners that detect strange objects in people’s bodies.”
In the first quarter of this year, Dubai Customs foiled 312 attempts to smuggle drugs, with most of those arrested aged between 26 and 35.
Last year, 1,030 smuggling attempts were thwarted.
Mr Al Kamali said the drug smugglers endangered their lives for a very small amount of money and that they tried to conceal their contraband in a variety of ways.
“Dubai Customs inspectors have seen several methods by drug traffickers trying to hide drugs in the weirdest places,” he said.
“Inspectors have dealt with those who insert drugs inside the wheels of the travel bags and hidden places in the suitcases.”
He said there was a factory in Asia that designed and prepared travel bags to conceal drugs.
“Drug traffickers even add materials to fool drug dogs,” Mr Al Kamali said. “Also, they make sweets made up of marijuana or chocolate that include heroin or cocaine.”
In December, a 32-year-old Ecuadorian was told he had to see out his 10-year sentence for smuggling almost 1 kilogram of liquid cocaine in 10 condoms.
And in October last year, a man from Togo who fell sick at Dubai airport was found to have nearly 1kg of cocaine in his stomach when he had a life-saving operation.
He was sentenced to life in jail.
Dubai Police said it arrested seven people in March for trying to smuggle and sell tramadol pills, heroin and crystal methamphetamine into the country.
The force said it seized 557,000 tramadol pills, 91,000 other illegal painkillers, 1.6 kilograms of heroin and 340 grams of crystal meth in four raids.
Last week, Interpol said that crystal meth remained the region’s most trafficked substance.
A campaign by Interpol’s Singapore office, called Operation Lionfish involved more than 2,000 police and Customs officials in 14 countries.
The operation “revealed a network of West African and Asian organised crime groups behind trafficking in methamphetamine”.
Of 59 seizures during the two-week campaign, nearly a quarter of the drugs confiscated was methamphetamine.
Cocaine, cannabis, heroin and amphetamine stimulants were also among the drugs seized.
Interpol said it identified a “cocaine trafficking route through Ethiopia to destinations in the Middle East, Asia and Pacific”.
nalramahi@thenational.ae
