A 45-year old British man has been arrested in Perth after he was found to have smuggled half a kilo of Methamphetamine to Australia from Thailand on a flight last Saturday.
The man was allegedly carrying the drug inside his body, in 106 separate pellets.
During a baggage examination at Perth airport, border force officials pulled the man aside after suspecting that he may have concealed drugs somewhere about his person.
A subsequent medical examination saw him eliminate 106 pellets, which had each been stamped pink, weighing around 500 grams in total. Although the pellets are currently undergoing rigorous testing to determine their purity levels, it’s believed at this stage that they contain Methamphetamine. As such, the man was charged with the importation of a ‘marketable quantity’ of a drug and will face trial at Perth Magistrates Court.
The mule should be relieved that his alleged transgressions were caught in Australia, rather than Thailand. The maximum penalty for trafficking a marketable quantity of controlled drugs in Australia is 25 years imprisonment, while the death sentence can be imposed in Thailand for drug trafficking.
Aside from the severe punishments meted out smuggling, the health risks associated with carrying and hiding drugs inside the body are considerable.
The packages can easily leak or burst, and can even cause impaction and obstructions in the stomach and intestines, leading to severe health problems and even death.
A case hit the headlines last year when Brazilian smuggler John Kennedy dos Santos Gurjao died after smuggling cocaine inside his body.
He was carrying 80 pellets of the drug inside his stomach during an Aer Lingus flight from Lisbon to Dublin. One of the pellets burst, prompting Gurjao to fly into an uncontrolled rage, biting a fellow passenger, suffering a seizure, then collapsing and dying at the back of the plane.
Featured stock image is of methamphetamine hydrochloride (crystal meth) by
