Belgian tried to smuggle cocaine in shoes

Officers from the Revenue's customs service yesterday discovered 1kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of €100,000, hidden in the shoes of a man who had just disembarked a flight in Dublin from Amsterdam.

The discovery brought to €450,00 the value of herbal cannabis and cocaine seized at the airport in the last week.

The man had packed the cocaine into the hollowed out heals of his shoes. He had also wrapped a quantity of the drug in plastic and tried to conceal it under his insoles.

According to Revenue the detection was made as a result of routine profiling. Customs officers arrested the 59-year-old Belgian national.

Yesterday's was the fourth major seizure at Dublin Airport in the last week. Herbal cannabis with a street value of €150,000 was detected, as was cocaine with a combined street value of €300,000. A total of four people have been arrested in connection with the seizures.

On Tuesday, a 40-year-old non-national was arrested after he disembarked a flight at Dublin airport from Amsterdam. The man had swallowed around 100 capsules of cocaine, or around half a kilo, which has an estimated street value of up to €60,000.

He was put under Garda surveillance at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin but has since been discharged. He is currently being detained at Cloverhill Prison and is scheduled to appear before Cloverhill District Court next Wednesday.

Earlier this week the Garda Commissioner, Mr Noel Conroy, told the joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice that seizures of cocaine so far in 2003 had significantly increased on last year.

Mr Conroy said that 72 kilos of the drug had been seized in the first six months of this year, compared to 32 kilos for the whole of 2002. He said 22 kilos of heroin had been seized in the first six months of this year, compared to 26 kilos for the whole of 2002.

Revenue recently said the most notable trend in its operations at Irish airports last year was the increase in cocaine seizures. In 2002 there were 22 seizures totalling 19.5kg, almost double the number in 2001.

A 19-year-old Estonian man died in Limerick last December after swallowing a large quantity of cocaine. He was on a flight to Peru when he told cabin crew he was feeling unwell. The plane was forced to land at Shannon but the man died when the capsules containing the drugs burst.