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Martin Wong

One of 15 Africans caught with heroin inside their bodies had swallowed 150 packages weighing 2.4kg

Fifteen Africans have been caught at Hong Kong airport after swallowing at least 30kg of high-grade heroin, customs said yesterday.

One suspect was found to have swallowed more than 150 pellets containing 2.4kg of heroin.

'It is a record. He must have swallowed up to his neck,' said Ben Leung Lun-cheung, head of customs' drug investigation bureau. 'The recruited Africans were all young and strong so they could hold the pellets for 20 hours, the time it takes to fly from Iran to Hong Kong, including waiting time,' Mr Leung said. 'They could not drink or eat during the period.'

He said the most heroin recovered from couriers' stomachs in the past was an average of only 1kg.

'It is very dangerous and shocking,' Mr Leung said.  'They had undergone two weeks' training in which they had to keep swallowing and then discharging the drug until they could hold the maximum or optimal amount of pellets.'

Customs said a multinational drug syndicate had recruited and trained the couriers to swallow and smuggle the drug from Iran to Hong Kong and the mainland.

It said the men, aged between 18 and 41, were arrested at the airport between November 5 and Sunday after they flew from Iran via Qatar.

Each  was paid  HK$10,000 to HK$20,000 to swallow about 2kg of heroin. A total of 30kg with a market price of HK$14 million had been recovered so far.

Each pellet, wrapped in plastic,  is five to six centimetres long and weighs 15 or 16 grams.

Detection of smugglers concealing drugs in their body could be difficult, the department's  division commander at the airport, Chik Bun-hung, said. 'Because of the large amount of pellets in their bodies, their actions are very slow ... when we questioned them, their responses were very suspicious.'

Customs said the capture of the 15 smugglers over the past two weeks followed intensive intelligence exchanges with their counterparts on the mainland and in the United States.

'Since September, there have been a number of such cases on the mainland and in Hong Kong. A few Africans were found dead in Guangzhou hotels,' Mr Leung said. Autopsies had revealed they died after the pellets burst inside them.

'We believe we have successfully cut off a new drug-trafficking route involving the Golden Crescent,' Mr Leung said, referring to the drug-producing area across Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, similar to the Golden Triangle of  Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand.

Noting that the syndicate was multinational and well-organised, Mr Leung said: 'It is difficult to say which country was the base as we are still investigating the case, but we believe that it has a connection in Hong Kong and the mainland.'

Nineteen cases of internal concealment of drugs have been discovered at the airport this year up to last week, compared to none last year and five in 2004, customs figures show.



Drug runner 'had to have pellets up to neck'