Customs officers at Dublin airport yesterday found cocaine valued at over €100,000 hidden in plastic pellets in shampoo bottles in the luggage of a woman who had disembarked a flight from France with her young son.
The 23-year-old woman is of Congolese origin but is an Irish passport holder.
Her luggage was selected for searching following passenger profiling by Customs & Excise officers at Dublin airport. Her bags were found to contain a number of shampoo bottles which had been packed with plastic pellets full of cocaine.
Three bottles had been filled with the pellets before shampoo was poured back into the containers to conceal the drugs in the event the lids were screwed off during a search.
However, when the bottles were cut open yesterday a total of 127 pellets were found containing the cocaine. The street value of the drug is estimated to be in the region of €105,000
The woman was detained at the airport for a short period before being arrested by gardaí and taken into custody. She was taken to Coolock Garda station and was accompanied there by her five-year-old son.
She is due to appear before Swords District Court this morning to face criminal charges in relation to the drugs find.
The woman and her son were stopped at the airport after they had disembarked a flight from Paris. They had travelled through the French capital from Johannesburg, South Africa.
The route from African nations via European airports had grown in popularity with foreign nationals seeking to smuggle smaller quantities of drugs, particularly cocaine in shipments up to 3kg, from South Africa.
Many come from African nations mostly via the European cities of Zurich, Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna, and have been found smuggling the drugs inside their bodies.
However, figures obtained by The Irish Times reveal the numbers of people smuggling drugs internally by swallowing or other internal concealment - known as "swallowers or stuffers" - have fallen sharply this year after a high number of such seizures last year.
In 2006 there were 17 "swallow or stuffer" detections involving just over 14kg valued at €984,000. However, so far this year there had been just one detection.
On that occasion four weeks ago a 40-year-old South African man was searched following passenger profiling after he had disembark a flight from Zurich having started his journey in Nairobi, Kenya.
Some 2.2kgs of cocaine valued at €154,000 were found in the man's luggage. He was later found to have concealed 200 grammes of the drug internally, valued at about €14,000.
The data obtained from Revenue's Customs & Excise Service shows drug seizures by Revenue have increased this year. The total value of all drug types seized nationally by Revenue last year reached €8.64 million. Before last week's haul, to the end of June that figure was €5 million.
