Police foil attempt to smuggle 13kg of cocaine

Dubai: An attempt to smuggle a 13 kilogrammes of cocaine to Zambia was foiled by the Dubai Police’s General Anti-Narcotics Department in cooperation with a number of international bodies.

A spokesman for the police here said cooperation efforts marked the biggest operation in the country’s history and indicates the needs to fight the crime on an international level.

Intelligence information provided by the department led to the arrest of two suspects, a man and a woman, who were arriving from Sao Paolo in Brazil to Zambia’s Lusaka airport with the drugs on April 10, Major General Abdul Jalil Mahdi, Director of the Anti-Narcotics Department, said.

The two suspects, identified as P.J.G. and P.J. M., both unemployed, carried some of the drugs in capsules in their guts and the rest inside their luggage.

They had a laptop, perfume bottles, four DVD players, a baby lotion bottle and a coffee jar, all stuffed with cocaine, Mahdi said.

The department received a letter from Roy Affleck, Regional Director of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in the British Consulate in Dubai, informing Mahdi about the success of the operation in Zambia.

Affleck thanked the department for its cooperation and coordination with the agency, which helped foil many drug smuggling attempts, many of which could not have been possible without the department’s efforts.