Gardaí believe they have disrupted the activities of an international drugs gang whose members were importing illicit drugs into the State from Africa. Conor Lallyand Steven Carrollreport.
Three people, two Africans and a British national, were in Garda custody last night after drugs were found in two hauls at Dublin airport and Blanchardstown in the west of the city.
The joint Garda and Customs and Excise operation began on Thursday afternoon when Customs officers found a suitcase packed with 20kg of herbal cannabis valued at about €200,000 at Dublin airport.
The suitcase belonged to a 48-year-old Scottish woman who was travelling on a South African passport. She had flown from South Africa to Dublin via Frankfurt, Germany.
Gardaí were notified of the find and the woman was allowed to collect her luggage in the airport's baggage hall as normal. However, a surveillance operation was put in place involving gardaí and Customs officers.
The woman was followed from the airport to a house in Blanchardstown. When she entered the property, gardaí moved in and searched the house.
They seized the suitcase containing cannabis and also found 1.5kg of cocaine valued at approximately €100,000.
Glucose powder was found at the scene. Gardaí believe this was being mixed with the cocaine to bulk it up, thus increasing its value when sold on the streets.
The woman was arrested along with two other people in the house at the time. One was a 32- year-old South African woman, the other was a man from Nigeria aged 29.
All three were arrested under section 2 of the Drug Trafficking Act. They were taken for questioning to Store Street Garda station in the city centre. They remained in custody last night and can be held for up to seven days without charge.
The route used by the couriers, from South Africa via Frankfurt, has been growing in popularity with couriers trying to bring drugs into Ireland in recent years.
Cocaine has increasingly been smuggled into Europe via west Africa and south Africa after being sailed or flown there from production countries in south and central America.
In a separate operation, Revenue's Custom and Excise service seized five million cigarettes as they were being smuggled into Ireland through Dublin Port yesterday.
The cigarettes were found in the back of a 40ft container which had been labelled "bed linen". The haul, which originated in Turkey, is worth €1.9 million.
If the cigarettes had been sold in Ireland, it would have resulted in a net loss to the exchequer of about €1.3 million. However, it is believed they were not destined for the Irish market.
The haul was found as a result of freight profiling and a scan by an X-ray container scanner.
Investigations were ongoing last night. Yesterday's detection brings to 23 million the number of cigarettes seized in Dublin Port so far this year.