Cartels employ ingenious ways

Many eyebrows were raised when a consignment of liquid cocaine was seized at Chittagong Port on Saturday. But this is just one innovative tactic international drug cartels use to smuggle the drug into different countries.

Smugglers over the years have stashed cocaine in consignments of food and other items. Incidents of carrying cocaine in stomach, paintings' frames and artifacts have been reported. But smuggling the drug in liquid form or in drug-filled condoms and implanted breasts are rather new tactics.

People in Bangladesh only knew about powder cocaine. In all the previous seizures of the addictive drug in the country, it was in powdered form.

Customs intelligence officials said they learnt about liquid cocaine a few months ago when the Canadian customs seized 310-kg of cocaine aboard a ship from Bolivia.

Meanwhile, officials of a UK intelligence agency and US forensic department experts will arrive in Dhaka next week to help local officials extract cocaine from the seized oil and probe the smuggling.

In March last year, German customs seized 12 ounces of liquid cocaine filled in 14 condoms. Officers at Leipzig airport found the Vatican-bound cocaine coming from South America.

In 2012, a Panamanian woman landed at Barcelona airport with 1.38 kg of cocaine in her implanted breasts. It was detected when the border police noticed fresh scars and blood-stained gauze around her chest. There were also pale patches beneath her skin.

The woman said she had a breast implant surgery recently. But police sent her to a local hospital where surgeons removed her implants and found cocaine.

About 100-kg cocaine was seized from a lorry carrying concentrated orange juice at the Port of Plymouth in Spain last year.

In the same year, 35 pounds of cocaine was seized at Port Newark, New Jersey. The drug was stashed in a shipping container, packed with 1,050 cartons of wine from Panama.

According to Huffington Post, a Texas pilot in September last year booked himself a direct trip to a hospital when a balloon of smuggled cocaine burst in his stomach. He allegedly ingested 62 small rubber bags of the drug before boarding a flight from Colombia to Houston.

The gang last year plotted to smuggle 108-kg cocaine into the UK by using a “James Bond”-style underwater vehicle, reported The Telegraph.

Three years ago, a Nigerian drug smuggler was arrested in Switzerland with 123 condoms filled with cocaine weighing 1.7 kilograms in his stomach.

Cocaine is produced in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, but trafficked across the globe. The US, Canada, North American and European countries are the main market for cocaine.

Countries like the USA, the UK and Canada have been spending huge money for their war on drugs, but can't stop the illegal trade as the kingpins adopt innovative and secret smuggling tactics, and lure people into drug trafficking.

EXPERTS DUE NEXT WEEK

Javed Patwary, additional inspector general of police, said foreign experts would arrive in Dhaka next week.

Experts of the UK intelligence agency and US forensic department would help local police and customs officials investigate the smuggling incident and extract cocaine from the sunflower oil.

“We don't have the expertise and equipment to extract cocaine from oil. Primarily, it has been detected that a barrel of sunflower oil contained cocaine, but we don't know the actual amount of the drug. The foreign experts would help us in this regard,” said Patwary, also head of the Special Branch (SB) of police.

A Bolivian company sent a container with 107 barrels of sunflower oil from Montevideo port in Uruguay. It arrived in Bangladesh via Singapore and was unloaded at Chittagong port on May 8.

A month later, the SB and customs intelligence officials identified the container at the port.

Police arrested Sohel, an employee of Khan Jahan Ali Ltd, who along with two other locals was trying to release the container upon instructions from Bangladesh-born UK citizen Bakul Mia.