DRUG MULES' DESPERATE MOTIVES

The claim by Britain's deputy high commissioner in Jamaica that one
in 10 passengers flying into London are likely to be smuggling drugs
has met with varying reactions in the UK.

The British diplomat, Phil Sinkinson, says that up to 30kg of cocaine
could be arriving on the 10 planes which land in London every week.

The drugs are increasingly carried in the passengers' stomachs.

Members of the black community in Britain have accused Mr Sinkinson
of exaggerating the figures and stirring up racial tension.

Trevor Phillips, deputy leader of Greater London Council, argues this
is scaremongering which could hamper police operations.

If the Jamaican community feels harassed, he says, "then they will be
increasingly reluctant to help the police detect those few who are
coming in with drugs".

But customs officers are more inclined to agree with the deputy high
commissioner.

Urine tests

In an operation in December in which they targeted one flight
arriving at Heathrow from Jamaica, they found 22 passengers were
carrying drugs internally.

Those couriers that are caught are detected by means of X-rays and urine tes
ts.

Michael Lowe, of the Heathrow branch of the Public and Commercial
Services Union (PCSU), says if they had had more men on duty and
better technical back-up they could have caught many more.

Home Office figures on the current prison population in the UK
underline the dramatic increase in the number of Jamaican "cocaine
mules", as they are known in the drugs trade.

Jamaicans are one of the largest group of foreign nationals in UK
jails. In 1996, there were 64 Jamaican prisoners sentenced for drug
offences. Now there are nearly 800.

The accounts of how a person can be persuaded to swallow often more
than a hundred condoms containing cocaine are harrowing.

At Cookham Wood Prison in Kent, I heard Jamaican women prisoners
explain why they did it.

School fees

Most of them are unemployed and single mothers and come from the
poorest ghettos of Kingston and Montego Bay.

Merle explains that she has to be "mother and father" to her five children.

"The only way I could get enough money to send them to school was to
carry drugs to England," she says.

She was promised =A33,000 but was caught and is now serving a 10-year
prison sentence.

Sheila describes how she was told to swallow 162 condoms containing cocaine.

=46alse lining

"After doing sixty, I stopped. The dealer gave me a bottle of Pepsi
and told me to get on with it.

"After ninety, I told him I couldn't manage any more."

With tears running down her cheeks, she tells how she was told to put
some in her vagina and the remainder into the false lining of a
suitcase.

She was caught because of the suitcase and was sentenced to seven
years in prison.

Plane death

The women all say that they were never warned that they could end up
in prison or that they would die if one of the condoms burst in their
stomachs.

The corpse of a female courier was carried off a plane at Gatwick last Octob
er.

Merle breaks down as she says: "I miss my children and they miss me.

"If only they had told me I would have ended up in prison, I would
never have done it."

But all the women confirm that there are enough desperate women back
home to ensure that the cocaine couriers will keep coming.