The 79-year-old was stopped by custom officers at Santiago International Airport after landing on a flight from Cancun, Mexico – police say claimed he had no idea how the crystal meth ended up in his luggage
A British pensioner detained at a Chilean airport, alleged to have had £200,000 worth of high-grade crystal meth in his suitcase, claimed a Mexican gang promised him £3.7m to carry the case, according to police.
The 79-year-old landed from Cancun, Mexico and was stopped by custom officers at Santiago International Airport. Police say the man claimed he had no idea how 5kg of methamphetamine up in the case, and produced a bizarre certificate with prize money pledged to him before being taken into custody and remanded in prison. New details about the arrest emerged today as Chilean police warned criminal gangs were targeting ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ drug mules.
Police said initial findings suggest the unnamed Brit had conversations with suspected traffickers in Brazil and the States.
Sergio Paredes, head of the Chilean PDI police force’s Anti-Narcotics Division at Arturo Merino Benitez Airport which is Santiago’s international airport, said: “The elderly British man we arrested claimed he had no idea his suitcase contained drugs when he was intercepted after picking it up from the luggage carousel and trying to enter our country with it. We interviewed him in English because he didn’t speak a word of Spanish and he alleged he had been deceived.
“He said he had received the suitcase from some Mexicans at the airport in Cancun before he boarded his flight and he claimed he had been promised a prize of $5million (£3.7m) for delivering the suitcase to its final destination. He was even carrying a rudimentary certificate alluding to the prize.
“He told us he was going to spend the night in Santiago and fly to Australia the next day but he didn’t have a hotel or flight booking. Apart from the two or three bits of information he offered us about the supposed prize money and his accommodation and travel plans, he didn’t say much.
“We believe he was a drug mule in the pay of a criminal gang and he’s now in prison on remand while we work on gathering evidence against him and the criminal organisation that sent him ahead of probable charges and a trial. We’ve intercepted drug couriers who are paid anything from $1,000 to $15,000. There are a lot of variables. We’re still looking into where the drugs came from and where they were going to end up.”
Officers said they obtained court authorisation to look through the OAP’s mobile and will continue working with police forces in Mexico, the US and the UK to identify the people who sent him to Chile.
Sources say the British pensioner is being held in Santiago 1 Penitentiary where, for his own safety, he is being kept away from other convicts and is only with other remand prisoners who have been accused for the most part of non-violent offences.
A judge has said he can be held in jail for 120 days, giving investigators just under four months to try to formally charge him.
Although initial reports pointed to the OAP facing a possible 15-year prison sentence if convicted, Chilean legal experts insisted last night he would probably be looking at five years behind bars and could benefit from preferential treatment if he agreed to co-operate as part of a plea bargain deal.
Mr Paredes said: “This case has its peculiarities, a frail-looking, elderly person being caught with a large amount of methamphetamine who had recently been operated on and still had scars from that medical intervention and looked like a typical grandad if I’m going to be honest.
“But we’ve seen everything here at this airport and we know the criminal gangs are increasingly using mules they think will be less likely to attract attention. We’ve caught people in wheelchairs trying to leave Chile through this airport with drugs attached to their bodies.
“We believe he was going to receive further instructions on what to do with the suitcase and the drugs once he got through immigration and left the airport. What we have gathered so far is information pointing to him being directed from Brazil and the United States because off his own back he showed us his mobile with conversations with prefixes from those countries.”
Rodrigo Diaz, a regional Chilean customs director whose remit includes the airport, said: “The scanner picked up something suspicious before this British OAP’s luggage reached the carousel. We’d marked the suitcase using a technology that meant lights flashed when he came through an arch in the customs filter on his way out of the airport and then proceeded to check it in the pensioner’s presence.
“Initially nothing was discovered after he took his clothes and other belongings from the suitcase. But the packets containing the amphetamine were found once a secret compartment in the case was broken open which was what the X-Ray scanner had detected as suspicious.”