BRUSSELS –  Brussels Zaventem airport is nowhere near being a drug-trafficking blackspot despite recent seizures, new figures from Belgian police and customs authorities show.

In 2004, some 93 drug suspects were detained at the airport, compared to 53 in 2003, Belga news agency reported Friday. In 2002, some 86 suspects were detained.

For the most part, suspects were couriers or recipients rather than traffickers.

Despite the rise in the number of suspects detained, the airport’s division of the federal police arrested only five individuals on trafficking charges in 2002, two in 2003 and three in 2003.

A pair of recent seizures, however, sparked some concerns that the airport was becoming an international trafficking centre.

On Thursday, the federal police detained a Venezuelan national who had swallowed two cocaine-filled capsules.

In another recent incident, police discovered 13, 370 kilos of  heroin in the baggage of two Dutch nationals of Turkish descent.

The suspects, a 24-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman, had flown into Brussels on a Turkish Airways airplane from Istanbul, stashing some of the contraband in a pair of shampoo bottles.

[Copyright Expatica 2005]

Subject : Belgian news