Asian smuggler caught with 116 heroin capsules in stomach sentenced to life imprisonment in Bahrain

TDT | Manama                                               

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

A man caught at the Bahrain International Airport in a smuggling attempt with capsules containing drugs in his stomach received life in prison. The High Criminal Court also slapped the man, an Asian national, with a BD5,000 fine and ordered his deportation after completing jail terms.

Court files say airport doctors retrieved 116 capsules stuffed with heroin from his stomach after police took the suspect, who acted suspiciously, for an x-ray examination. Police said they removed him to the red lane after he appeared nervous when confronted by airport police. The man, however, was in denial about carrying anything illegal and "hence we decided to take him for a medical examination," the officers told the court.

"We had also checked his luggage and didn't find anything suspicious." However, during an x-ray examination, doctors spotted several capsules in his stomach. Doctors then gave him laxatives to force him to pass the capsules out. The laxatives, which make the bowel squeeze more strongly, finally helped out 116 capsules, which the man admitted to swallowing before boarding the flight to Bahrain.

When asked, the suspect told investigators that he was planning to sell those capsules in the Kingdom. The defendant will be deported after completing his jail term. Recently, Daily Tribune reported a similar case in which airport police caught three men with 275 capsules of Shabu and Heroin, which they confessed to having swallowed before boarding a plane to Bahrain.

In another incident, a Bahrain court sentenced a man to five years in jail for smuggling more than 100 drug capsules in his stomach. Police caught him also at the Bahrain International Airport. Smuggling drugs abroad on passenger planes by swallowing small bags of drugs is a common and dangerous practice among smugglers. Reports have also emerged of people dying from cocaine bags rupturing inside their bodies.