The mules hide the substance in their luggage, under their clothing, or even inside the body. (Illustrative photo)
Ludovic MARIN / AFP
Distrust is rife at Charles-de-Gaulle airport, the largest in France with 67.4 million passengers annually. For several months, the platform has been faced with a sharp increase in drug couriers, “mules” in police jargon, an old phenomenon, but whose intensification is putting airport authorities under pressure.
Increase in consumption
At the end of November, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Bobigny Court (north-east of Paris), competent for this airport, had already identified 250 procedures concerning mules in 2024 compared to 211 for the whole of 2023, an increase of 18% even before the month of December, according to figures communicated to AFP.
Behind this boom in mules lies above all the explosion in the consumption of South American cocaine in France and Europe. Faced with the saturation of the American market, white powder is increasingly flooding the promising market of the Old Continent, tracking down the slightest fault to flow into it.
“Consumers must be reminded that when they snort cocaine, it is often through the anus of a person they do not know.”
“We have never done so much cocaine at Roissy,” notes Simon Decressac, director of customs for the passenger section of the airport. Refusing to disclose the seizure figures for the current year, he still recognizes a “double-digit increase” in 2024, compared to the 700 kilos of cocaine discovered on travelers in 2023.
On flights departing from Colombia, the drugs are generally hidden in suitcases, while Brazilian flights are mainly characterized by the recurrence of “ballers” having ingested capsules of compressed cocaine protected by a layer of hard plastic. A more reliable cover than the condoms used in the past, which threatened to rupture and kill the wearer.
African sector
However, “90% (of drugs) pass through sea and land routes. By air, we really only have a very small part of the spectrum,” recalls Philippe Zeinulabedin-Rafi, head of the customs division in Roissy.
However, with the tightening of controls in European ports, drug trafficking is seeking “to multiply the channels of irrigation of the market”, he says, particularly from certain departure airports such as in Guyana, a French territory in South America. However, “passing small quantities still means granting yourself the guarantee that there is technically a quantity that passes regularly”.
However, the most important mule sector in Roissy is not South America, but West Africa. A situation which can be explained by the use of the African continent as a rebound region for Latin American drugs.
Human disaster
Cannon fodder for drug traffickers, who pay them a few thousand euros for the trip and abandon them to their fate in the event of arrest, the mules are generally young, poor people, with a clear majority of women.
Cases of drugs swallowed or hidden in all possible orifices of the body require a heavy medical treatment process on the part of airport authorities, which mobilizes several agents for long hours.
For Emmanuel Bizeray, head of customs services at Roissy international terminal 2E, “consumers must still be reminded that when they snort cocaine, it is often passed through the anus of a person they do not know “.
(afp)
