- The six male passengers were arrested on Tuesday at Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo, Brazil
- The drug mules admitted to carrying up to 150 capsules of cocaine
- The suspects, who were taken to a local hospital to flush out the drugs, are charged with international drug trafficking
Six Nigerian passengers were arrested on Tuesday with cocaine capsules in their stomachs before attempting to board a flight in Brazil.
Federal police officers were conducting routine checks on passengers waiting for a flight to Ethiopia at Guarulhos International Airport in the southeastern city of São Paulo when they noticed one of the suspects behaving strangely.
Authorities searched the man and his carry-on luggage and then tested him via a drug and explosives detection device, which revealed that he had come into contact with cocaine.
The person confesses that he swallowed the small plastic bags containing the Type-A party drug.
His six accomplices, all men, underwent the same test, which confirmed that they had all had contact with the powdery narcotic.
X-rays taken of three of six Nigerian men arrested Tuesday at Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo, Brazil for having cocaine capsules in their stomachs
A police station inspects the luggage of one of six Nigerian passengers arrested on Tuesday for drug trafficking at an airport in São Paulo, Brazil
The drug mules were all taken to a local medical facility, where X-rays revealed dozens of capsules in their stomachs. Procedures were then performed to expel the cocaine.
Some suspects hid between 100 and 150 capsules in their abdomen.
Upon arrival in Ethiopia, three of the suspects had connecting flights to the city of Kano in northern Nigeria.
They are expected to appear before a federal court judge and face charges of international drug trafficking.
Authorities said the six Nigerian men were on the National Migrant Register.
Three of the suspects had previously entered Brazil to seek asylum and one was arrested at Guarulhos International Airport in 2017 on an arrest warrant.
According to data obtained by Brazil’s Globo News, authorities at Guarulhos International Airport have arrested 43 people carrying cocaine in capsules since 2019.
At least 15,464 kilos of cocaine were seized during the checks.
Despite the number of arrests, Federal Police Chief Dennis Cali acknowledged that it is difficult to pick up passengers who may have drugs in their stomachs because they do not have the necessary X-ray equipment.
“We don’t have a body scanning system here at the airport,” Cali said. ‘So it is a very detailed analysis of the passenger profile, the ticket purchasing profile. A lot of analysis needs to be done until we (detect) the suspicious person.”
Cali said the suspects were immediately taken to the hospital because they feared one of the small balloons could have burst and exposed one of them to an overdose that could have killed them.
In April, a 21-year-old Colombian man died in a hospital in Santo Domingo de la Cazada, Spain, after two of the 93 cocaine capsules he swallowed burst in his stomach. An autopsy showed that the packages contained 1,200 grams of cocaine.