DRUG TRAFFIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 225, 17 May 1932, Page 2

DRUG TRAFFIC

*» INGENIOUS METHODS USED TO OUTWIT THE CUSTOMS. Drug traffickers are at work in all parts of the worffl, and a dj;ive against them is heing directed by an Englishman, Major-General T. W. Russell, commandant of the Cairo City police, and director of the Egyptian Central Narcotics Intelligence Board. The report of the bureau for 1931 reveals amazing stories of the adventures of those who are tva k' ig down the traffickers. The profits on drugs amounts to as much as 6567 per cent. Heroin seiz■ed by the police working under General Russell was sold to the ignorant addicts at the rate of, roughly £1000 a pound, giving them a profit of £985. To get the drugs into Egypt the traffickers often employ women, who carry the dope strapped to their thighs and legs by speciai bandages and garters. Consular seals and signatures are forged to get packages through the Customs. The son of an ex-commandant of police in Beirut, Syria, hit on an ingenious scheme for smuggling drugs — he sent them in the crank case of his car. The investigating officers, however, diseovered even this plot, and found in tha crank case more than 151b of drugs. This little effort cost its perpetrator two years in prison and a fine of £2000. Probably the most astonishing effort of the traffickers revealed in the report was an attempt to employ the British Navy to carry hashish from Syria to Alexandria. Petty Officer Laary of H.M.S. Calypso, was asked by traffickers at Beirut to undertake the commission, his share of the spoils to be £45. Leary reported the matter, and was told by his officer to fall in with the proposals of the gang. In due course he was handed 41b of hashislfi which he "smuggled" on board in baskets of fruit. Leary carried out his instructions so well that the police were able to arrest the gang, each memb?v of which was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, and a fine of £1000. Information was received in London on February 28 that another big drug organisation, involving at least 60 people, had been diseovered at Alexandria, Egypt, and that fifteen arrests had been made.