Plane makes emergency landing after smuggler vomits cocaine
A KLM flight made an unscheduled landing in Barcelona after a man from Ghana started vomiting up egg-sized balls of cocaine he was smuggling in his stomach, Spanish police said today.
The 37-year-old man remains in serious condition because one of the sealed packets burst, releasing cocaine into his system.
The incident occurred on Saturday on a flight from Ghana to the Netherlands, said KLM spokesman Hugo Baas.
The man had swallowed nearly 1.8 kilos of the drug, partitioned into 96 plastic packets that were dangerously large, a Civil Guard official said.
After the plane landed in Barcelona, the man was arrested and taken to a hospital. The flight then continued to the Netherlands, Baas said.
The airline spokesman said the man’s final destination was Madrid.
As of September 30, police had confiscated 655 kilos of cocaine at Barcelona’s airport, up from 178 kilos for all of 2005.
The upswing was due in part to newly added direct flights between Latin America and Barcelona and an overall increase in flights due to expansion at the airport, the Civil Guard official said.
