HONG KONG: Three suspected drug traffickers were arrested at Hong Kong International Airport after suspected cocaine worth HK$1.9 million was discovered concealed in three eagle-shaped concrete sculptures, police said yesterday.
The three men were detained when they collected the parcel, mailed from South America earlier this week, at the airport’s cargo terminal on Chun Wan Road on Thursday afternoon.
It was the third seizure of cocaine at Hong Kong airport within a week. In the previous two cases, couriers were deployed to smuggle illegal drugs into the city; cocaine with an estimated street value of HK$4.6 million was confiscated.
In one of the two cases, customs officers arrested a woman who arrived from Colombia on Saturday after 1.65kg of cocaine was found hidden in a secret pocket sewn into her underpants.
She was intercepted for inspection at the airport after officers thought she was walking unnaturally, according to Hong Kong customs.
A senior customs official said drug dealers used different methods and routes to smuggle illegal drugs into Hong Kong to try to avoid detection. Hong Kong has recorded a sharp rise in cocaine seizures this year. Police and customs officers confiscated 163kg of cocaine in the first six months of this year, up 167 per cent from 61kg over the same period last year.
On Thursday, police and customs officers mounted a joint operation at the airport’s cargo terminal after receiving intelligence.
Three Hong Kong men aged 30 to 51 were picked up at about 3pm when they arrived to collect the parcel of three sculptures mailed to the city.
“Illegal drugs were concealed in the hollow centre of the sculptures. Suspected cocaine weighing about 1.8kg was discovered when our officers broke the sculptures into pieces,” a police source said. “We believe it was for local consumption,” he said.
Separately, Narcotics Bureau officers arrested another Hong Kong man, 25, in Pat Heung at about 5.30pm on Thursday after 5kg of suspected ketamine was found in a bag he was carrying.
On the other day, all four suspects were still being held for questioning and had not been charged. An investigation by the Narcotics Bureau is continuing.
