Smuggler sentenced to ten years in prison

Dubai: A woman who took a trip around the world to smuggle two kilos of cocaine from Brazil to Mozambique, transiting through Dubai, is to spend ten years in jail.

When the 29-year-old Namibian woman, A.S., appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Thursday she admitted she smuggled the drugs through four different countries to reach her final destination — Mozambique.

Presiding Judge Hamad Abdul Latif Abdul Jawad jailed A.S. for ten years and fined her Dh50,000. She will later be deported.

Prosecutors accused A.S. of smuggling in transit and possessing five plastic pouches of cocaine that weighed two kilos.

"Yes Sir I am guilty. I was supposed to take the drugs and hand them to a person in Maputo, Mozambique. I took the drugs from Sao Paolo in Brazil and came via transit to Dubai. I was not supposed to enter Dubai and my flight was scheduled to continue to Nairobi in Kenya then to Kinshasa in the Congo before reaching the final destination in Mozambique," said A.S.

Walking slowly

According to the arraignment sheet, the passenger smuggled two plastic pouches in a shoe sole, two other pieces were taped together in a triangular form and there was another single pouch. An anti-narcotics policeman said the woman was walking very slowly as if weighed down.

"I stopped her and asked my female colleague to take her to the search room… we found two pieces of cocaine hidden inside her underwear. While taking her to the airport's anti-narcotics police office, we realised she was still walking heavily… we found two other pieces of cocaine in the form of a sole hidden inside her shoe. During questioning, she confessed someone gave her $2,000 (Dh7,346) to smuggle the drugs from Sao Paolo to Mozambique."