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Angolan drug queen seized in Brazil

Monday May 21 2018
drugs

Drugs seized from a ship. An Angolan national was on May 17, 2018 arrested at a Brazil airport while trying to smuggle drugs on a flight home. FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

By ARNALDO VIEIRA

An Angolan national was last Thursday arrested at a Brazil airport while trying to smuggle drugs on a flight home, media reported Monday.

The state-run Jornal de Angola, reported the arrest of the 24-year-old woman at the Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo city.

“The woman was carrying three bags each containing 12 volumes of cocaine weighing 45kg,” the Jornal de Angola said, adding the consignment was detected by the X-ray system with the help of a police dog.

A serious problem

In February, Angolan authorities arrested a ship, which was coming from Brazil, with 500kg of cocaine at Porto Comercial de Luanda.

The consignment was hidden in 16 bags used for packaging sugar.

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Drug trafficking was fast becoming a serious problem in Angola, which is seen as a key transit zone of the illicit cargo from Latin America.

With the heightened controls in Europe, Africa was increasingly preferred by drug traffickers as their main transit point, according to the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crimes.

RELATED CONTENT: Weak border controls to blame for rise in crimes in East Africa

Reports say most of the drugs seized in the Angola originated from the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Sao Paulo is a vibrant financial centre and one of the world's most populous cities, while Rio de Janeiro is the second-most populous municipality in the South American state.

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