Cocaine seized at Dar airport

A man holding a Kenyan passport was caught by the special drugs task force for carrying 131 pellets of cocaine.

Head of the Anti-drugs Unit (ADU), Mr Godfrey Nzowa, said that the man had tried to enter the country through the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) from Brazil.

Police had suspected the man to have carried drugs in his stomach soon after he had embarked on the aircraft when it stopped at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa.

“We captured the person on Friday night at 01:30 am and we succeeded to recover 131 pellets of cocaine from his stomach,” Mr Nzowa told The Citizen yesterday.

The man is in police custody.

 The street value of 131 pellets is Sh111.35 million, according to ADU experts.

Mr Nzowa said the number of pellets was the highest ever to have been swallowed by drug mules caught in the country’s history.

Last December, a woman was caught at the JNIA with 122 capsules of heroin. She was arrested with her colleague as she was about to board a Qatar Airways plane bound for China.

In 2005, another person released some 124 capsules, which were by then a record amount of drugs swallowed by one person.

Friday’s arrest is the second of that nature this year. On January 6, a woman was arrested at the same airport as she was about to fly off with 63 pellets of heroin in her stomach.

The woman, who had a Tanzanian passport, was about to board a flight to Macau, China, when she aroused the suspicion of anti-drugs personnel.

Source @ The Citizen