Johannesburg - He had checked in his luggage. And with boarding pass in hand, he made his way to the boarding gate to catch a flight to Dubai. He must have believed he was home-free.
But what he didn’t count on was a police tip-off that alerted the cops to his precious cargo.
As he approached the boarding gate on Tuesday, the Hawks investigators stationed at OR Tambo International Airport pounced and in the process stopped him from smuggling R20 million worth of diamonds that he had swallowed.
“In his passport it shows he was in South Africa before. This was his second trip,” said Hawks spokesman Captain Paul Ramaloko.
The Lebanese national is believed to be part of a syndicate, and the police could not rule out the possibility that he is linked to another Lebanese man who was arrested for attempting to smuggle diamonds in March.
The Hawks said they were investigating whether the pair had been operating as part of a smuggling syndicate.
Officers at the airport gave the man laxatives to flush out the valuable stones and recovered 220 pieces of diamonds amounting to 1 000 carats or 200 grams, estimated to be worth about R20m.
“The diamonds were immediately released,” Ramaloko explained.
He declined to fully explain the police’s procedure in such incidents as he said it was “not for public consumption”.
Ramaloko said the police had to clean the diamonds before they could be logged as evidence.
The man was expected to appear in the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court today.
Ramaloko said: “We do not know whether he had swallowed the diamonds before he came to the airport or during arrest.”
South Africa is one of the world’s most prolific producers of diamonds, which are also mined commercially in neighbouring Botswana and Zimbabwe.
The Star, Daily Mail