RECORD SEIZURE OF COCAINE AT AIRPORT

Windhoek

THREE Angolan women are in Police custody in Windhoek after they were arrested at the Hosea Kutako International Airport on Monday, allegedly with a record quantity of cocaine hidden in the luggage of one of them.

The Unit Commander of the Namibian Police's Drug Law Enforcement Unit, Detective Inspector Barry de Klerk, said yesterday that his unit was still investigating whether two of the women who had been arrested could be linked to a suspected drug-smuggling syndicate of which the third woman may have been part.

De Klerk said the arrest of the three women resulted from a routine luggage search by customs officers at the airport.

That search ended in the largest quantity of cocaine ever to have been found in Namibia on a single occasion, being discovered in three suitcases that one of the women, aged 22, had with her, he said.

About 21 kilograms of the drug, valued at some N$9.45 million at the current, general street price of N$450 a gram that is paid for cocaine in Namibia, was discovered hidden in 112 packages of new shirts in the three suitcases, De Klerk explained.

He added that the cocaine was found hidden inside carton shirt stiffeners - the rectangular piece of cardboard normally put inside folded new shirts in order to keep the garments' shape.

The woman in whose luggage the shirts were found had arrived at the airport on a flight from Johannesburg.

Her journey to Namibia had however started in Sao Paulo, Brazil, from where she had flown to Johannesburg, De Klerk said.

The three arrested women - the 22-year-old prime suspect and women aged 33 and 50 respectively - are thought to have travelled together, and were all transporting new shirts in their luggage with them, he added.

He said the 22-year-old woman was claiming that she had bought the shirts in Brazil with the aim of taking it to Angola to resell it.

She also claimed that she was planning to buy a flight ticket to Angola in Namibia; she did not yet have such a ticket, De Klerk related.

The suspects are expected to appear in the Windhoek Magistrate's Court today.

The 21kg of cocaine that was seized on Monday eclipses the previous largest quantity of the drug to have been found with suspected drug smugglers in Namibia.

The previous record was set in August 1997, when 17.5 g of cocaine was found hidden in electrical transformers that two men, one a Cameroonian, the other from Nigeria, had in their luggage in Windhoek as they were about to board a bus bound for South Africa.

Those two suspects went on to be convicted of dealing in cocaine, and in February 1999 each was sentenced to ten years imprisonment.