SHAH ALAM – Police have arrested a 20-year-old Latin American man who carried 1,152g of cocaine worth RM230,400 in his stomach.
Selangor police chief Datuk Hussein Omar Khan said the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Narcotics Crime Investigation Division detained the man on May 17 after an X-ray scan showed suspicious objects in his stomach.
“The suspect was detained in the hospital and monitored by the police.
“After three days of monitoring, 95 yellowish-white capsules containing cocaine were removed from his stomach,” he said at a press conference at the Selangor police contingent headquarters today.
Hussein said the suspect, who is a mechanic, is a Peru passport holder and had flown to Malaysia from Peru with a transit in Dubai.
However, the man’s nationality is still unclear, Hussein said, adding that questioning the man is difficult due to the language barrier.
Police believe the man had also been waiting for instructions from a drug cartel on what to do with the cocaine-filled capsules.
“He was waiting for instructions on whether to give the capsules to someone else here or to move them to a different country.”
The suspect is under remand for seven days and is being investigated for trafficking under Section 39b of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, for which the penalty is death or life imprisonment, or a minimum of 12 strokes of the cane, if convicted.
Hussein said police rarely come across cocaine cases in Malaysia.
Previously reported cocaine busts included one in Penang in September 2019, when police seized 12 tonnes of cocaine worth RM2.4 billion – the largest haul of cocaine in Malaysian history – and another in August last year, when 88kg of cocaine worth RM17.6 million were seized in a raid at the KLIA Cargo Complex. – May 20, 2024