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More cocaine seized at border |
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A thirty-five-year-old Venezuelan man was detained by the Portuguese police during a surprise routine inspection to all people entering the country through the border at the international bridge in Vile Real de Santo António. The man was travelling on a bus from Seville, Spain to Lisbon and he was one of the 45 passengers who were asked by border police to leave the bus to be inspected.
Since he wasn’t able to present a permit to enter Portugal, the Police said they were preparing to order him to return to Spain when they noticed he was behaving in a suspicious manner. The suspect was searched and police found he was trying to smuggle into Portugal more than half a kilo of cocaine.
According to the Police, the 566 grams of cocaine with a very high degree of purity were strapped to the man’s chest with duck tape and hidden beneath his clothes. Police said the drug has a market value of about 46 thousand euros. Police added that the Venezuelan suspect’s passport had stamps which showed that he had recently made several travels from South America to Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Rumania and Morocco. Although the Algarve border with Spain at the Guadiana River has been open since the two neighbouring countries joined the EU Schengen free circulation zone, a few years ago the Governments of Portugal and Spain decided to place a Police post there with customs officers from the two countries which perform surprise inspections regularly throughout the year.
The amount of cocaine seized in Portugal has increased dramatically over the last few years. According to the latest data released by the Lisbon based European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the main point of entry of cocaine into Europe remains the Iberian Peninsula. There have been marked increases in cocaine seizures and quantities seized in Spain and Portugal. Spain accounted for around half of the total number of seizures while Portugal overtook the Netherlands as the country with the second largest quantities intercepted: 18.1 tonnes in 2005, compared with 7.4 tonnes in 2004. The EU has responded to these changes in trafficking routes by opening two months ago in Portugal the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre Narcotics, which has the participation of seven EU Member States (Spain, Ireland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK) and the involvement of Europol. |
