PASSENGER PROFILING PAYS OFF IN DRUGS WAR

For the past two years Ireland has been used as a back-door route into
Europe by international crime gangs trafficking in cocaine.

Ireland is an ideal transit point for gangs concentrating on the
highly lucrative British and mainland European markets because of its
location as an island on the edge of the continent and its rugged coastline.

Most of the major shipments in the past have been comprised of
cannabis although there have been occasional shipments of other drugs.
But since late 1997, gardai believe the country has been specifically
targeted by well organised gangs with contacts in three continents.

They are concentrating on cocaine to meet the apparent growth in
demand for the white powder which is no longer a weekend recreational
drug for high-flyers.

At the heart of the operation is a key coterie of Nigerians who have
set up four or five groups of professional couriers to ship the
cocaine across Europe while avoiding the increasingly sophisticated
methods set up by international police and customs agencies to nab the
carriers through profiling airline passengers.

The profiling system, which is operated successfully in several
countries, concentrates on passengers who fit into certain categories
or build up unusual patterns in terms of flight bookings or
destinations. Ironically, the suspected courier stopped at Dublin
airport with four kilos of cocaine on Sunday was not immediately
obvious from profiling although he had travelled to Dublin from Peru
via Madrid.

The 37-year-old white South African was detained by a garda
immigration officer, who was a former member of the national drugs
unit, because he believed the passenger was acting suspiciously. When
the officer carried out a search he found the cocaine hidden in two
catering fruit cocktail tins which were in the passenger's hand luggage.

The gangs attempt to circumvent the profiling system by hopping on and
off flights across Europe. Most of the flights into Dublin have been
through Frankfurt although Madrid was used on Sunday and Amsterdam has
also been on the flight path in the past.

MASTERMIND

The criminal mastermind behind the racket is a Nigerian living in
London while the Irish side of the operation is being handled by
another Nigerian living in Dublin.

The group has links with a Colombian drug cartel and can purchase the
cocaine for ``next to nothing'' in Peru.

The small outlay means that if even a few shipments reach the street
market successfully, the gang has made a sizeable profit.

Sunday's seizure was the third cocaine shipment brought in by the
Nigerian controlled gangs to be intercepted by the Garda national
drugs unit and the Customs drug unit in the past couple of months.

But previously Gardai discovered that Nigerian couriers were
``swallowing'' pellets of cocaine paste and bringing them in on
flights into Shannon airport. This route was smashed by a series of
raids and finds last year in the Shannon-Limerick region.

Nigerians based in this country are also reputed to be heavily
involved in the racket and the same group is suspected of being
responsible for a spate of scams with stolen credit cards.

A number of them are also carrying asylum cards and using false
identity documents while a relatively minor scam involves sidetracking
the billing system for a telephone at a location in north Kildare and
charging friends and acquaintances calling families overseas.

Cocaine is estimated to have a street value here of about pounds
80,000 a kilo but gardai accept that the ``incredibly high'' level of
purity emerging from forensic examinations of the Peruvian shipments
has meant that any of the shipments that have slipped through will be
cut and mixed with talcum powder and other substances up to half a
dozen times.

The shipment of four kilos seized on Sunday has been estimated to be
worth a conservative pounds 500,000 but gardai are satisfied that
after examination the final value will be well in excess of double
that figure.

And since some of the shipment is thought to have been destined for
private parties organised to coincide with the MTV awards ceremony in
Dublin on Thursday night it is likely that its value to the
traffickers would have increased again.