We’ve all been abroad on holiday at some point. And we all know the feeling of having been on a long and tiring flight. All you want to do when you land is pick up your luggage as quickly as possible, find where you parked your car before you left and head home.
Notice we said ‘pick up your luggage’ there. This is because some people seem to forget what they got on the plane with.
And that is exactly what seems to have happened at Heathrow recently. As unbelievable as it may sound, someone forgot to collect a bag which was stuffed with cocaine. And we do mean stuffed – the estimated value of the drugs found is some £800,000.
Obviously the staff members there are used to the odd bag going unclaimed, probably by those who travelled with lots of bags in a group and missed the odd one. But we don’t think they are used to finding too many bags containing that kind of booty.
At the time of writing they are still working on trying to identify the owner. Not surprisingly they seem to have forgotten to include a luggage tag on the bag for their drugs to be returned to them if they forgot them. But thanks to ongoing investigations by HM Revenue and Customs, an investigation is in hand to try and solve the mystery of who put the bag on the flight, and who failed to collect it at Heathrow.
What we do know is that the flight came from Mexico, but other than that officials are giving out very little information. All they will say is that they are continuing to investigate the matter.
There have been some significant events in recent months that have put those who bring the drugs into the country on the back foot though. Perhaps the person who intended to collect the luggage was spooked for some reason, and failed to collect it in order to escape the risk of being caught? Whatever the reason is, we should be glad that the vigilant staff at Heathrow Airport spotted the case and removed it for inspection. At least we know there is a lot of cocaine that won’t be making it into circulation in this country.
It will be interesting to follow any subsequent news on this report though, to see whether they do identify the owner of the case and catch them. Whether they are still in the country or not remains to be seen, but it is still an interesting development in the war against drugs.
At the end of the day, even with all the sophisticated detection equipment that Heathrow – and other airports – have available, some drugs do still get through. It makes you wonder how much does, and how many attempts to smuggle in drugs are thwarted.
Hopefully the loss of this amount of cocaine at Heathrow Airport will make the smugglers think again. But somehow we don’t think so.