Brit Girls Arrested In Ghana For Smuggling
Two 16-year-old British girls were arrested at Ghana's Accra airport earlier this month with $600,000 worth of cocaine, British customs officials said Thursday.
British media reported that the haul weighed-in at about 14 pounds, and was discovered in the girls' luggage.
The two, both from London, were stopped by Ghanaian drug officials on July 2 and arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking, said Tony Walker of Britain's HM Revenue and Customs.
Both are receiving guidance from consular officials, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said in London.
Walker said the girls are believed to be drug mules — couriers who transport cocaine for traffickers. "The use of such young girls as couriers vividly illustrates the ruthlessness of the criminal drug gangs involved in this traffic," he said in a statement from London.
Britain's Sky News reported that the girls were arrested while trying to board a British Airways flight to London, where they reportedly live.
With cocaine prices in Europe soaring, West Africa has become a new drug trafficking route. Cocaine, originating mostly in Colombia, is brought on small planes and dropped off on islands off the West African coast, and then distributed to mules who carry it onward to Europe.
Sky also reported that British counter-narcotics authorities have recently provided their counterparts in Ghana with high-tech equipment for airport screening, including machines which blow puffs of air at passengers and detect miniscule amounts of illegal substances as they pass through.