Jamaican mules 'on every flight'

Up to 30 passengers on every flight to London from Jamaica are drug mules smuggling cocaine, the British High Commission in Kingston warned today.

British Deputy High Commissioner Phil Simpkinson said earlier police estimates that one in 10 passengers was carrying drugs was probably a "low estimate".

He told the BBC mules could be bringing in as much as 30kg of cocaine on every flight. He said the couriers, usually poor single women who swallow the drugs to evade detection, knew there were not enough resources to stop them.

The so-called drugs dons in Jamaica who pay the mules up to £5,000 per trip see the chance of interception as an acceptable risk. One in six female prisoners in British jails is now a foreigner and 79 per cent of them are convicted of drugs offences. Jamaican women are by far the largest group.

Mr Simpkinson said he had heard reports that one in 10 passengers was boarding a flight after swallowing 100 packets of cocaine. "It's very difficult to estimate exactly how many passengers on board any flight have got cocaine hidden inside them, but that is probably an estimate on the low side," he said.

Today's concern comes after two police and Customs operations in the past month which saw 22 passengers arrested for drugs offences after landing at Gatwick on a BA flight and 22 found to have swallowed cocaine before boarding a Jamaica flight to Heathrow.

Superintendent Glendon Wright of the Jamaican police has blamed the problem on the worsening economic situation on the Caribbean island. "The drug courier situation is the most available form of employment for most people in Jamaica today," he said.

Some estimates suggest that 65 per cent of the cocaine entering Britain comes in via Jamaica - most through London airports.

Last month's operations were mounted by Customs officials and officers from Scotland Yard's Operation Trident squad which targets the armed gangsters behind London's multi-million crack cocaine trade. Trident's Detective Chief Inspector Les Green said: "This was just a routine flight into London from Jamaica. We believe this was the lower end of the sort of numbers coming in."

There is also clear evidence that British women are getting caught up in the trade - the number imprisoned on drugs charges in Jamaica has risen from 20 in 1999 to 150 today. British High Commission spokeswoman Mags Fenner said: "Most of the Brits imprisoned here are single mothers from inner-city areas. After they've spent a few years in jail here they probably realise they weren't that badly off in the UK."

Lord Harris, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said there was undoubtedly a problem but added: " Some of the statistics the British High Commission are quoting are frankly unknowable. People simply don't know what proportion are drug mules."