A homing pigeon was intercepted by
police at a prison near San Jose, Costa Rica, after it was seen by a guard
landing in the jail’s courtyard with a bag tied to its body.
On inspection, the black zipper bag
was found to contain 14g of cocaine and the same amount of marijuana.
Authorities suspect the bird was
looked after and fed by an inmate in the medium-security wing of La Reforma
prison, Costa Rica’s biggest penitentiary, before someone smuggled it out of
the prison only to load it with illicit cargo ahead of its return route.
The director of Costa Rica’s prison
police force told the media after the ruse had been exposed last Tuesday that
the pigeon was able to fly perfectly well despite the drug-stuffed pouch
strapped against its breast.
Pablo Bertozzi, who said he had seen
cases of cats being used to transport drugs strapped to their tails, added that
the homing pigeon incident would lead to a redoubling of efforts to clean the
jail of controlled substances.
“The real problem is that there is a
lot of consumption. If there weren’t consumers, the drugs wouldn’t be
arriving”, Mr Bertozzi said.
The bird, which has affectionately
been nicknamed “narcopigeon” (narcopaloma) by Costa Ricans, has been handed
over by the authorities to a zoo, where it is being kept under observation
before being housed in a larger enclosure.
“Because of the way it came to us,
it can never be freed,” a zoo worker told local media, adding that the bird was
reluctant to eat, probably because it had become used to being hand-fed by one
person.
In 2011, prison guards in
Bucaramanga, Colombia, found a pigeon attempting without success to fly over
the wall into the jail laden with 45g of marijuana.
Two years ago, police in Buenos
Aires smashed a marijuana-trafficking ring which used pigeons as a risk-free
manner to transport the drug to their home base.
Source: The Telegraph
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