Cocaine found in mother’s bottles of shampoo

A MOTHER, arriving from Paris into Dublin with her five-year-old son, was arrested yesterday after cocaine pellets were found packed into shampoo bottles in her luggage.

Depending on the purity of the cocaine, its street value is estimated at about €105,000.

The woman was the holder of an Irish passport but was also described as being Congolese.

The drugs were found after customs officers stopped the 23-year-old woman and x-rayed her baggage. Inside, they found three shampoo bottles stuffed with 127 individually wrapped pellets.

The 1.5kg of cocaine in tablet form was mixed in among the shampoo liquids.

Customs yesterday said the find resulted from risk profiling by officers, who decided to X-ray the luggage.

The woman arrived on a Paris flight having travelled from Johannesburg.

She was arrested and handed over to the Garda Drug Squad from Coolock.

Her five-year-old boy was also taken to the Garda Station. The Garda Press Office later said a family friend was taking care of the child.

The seizure follows a separate find by customs officers over the weekend where €240,000 of herbal cannabis was discovered. A South African female, 28, was arrested.

Figures released yesterday for the first half of this year show customs officers seized more than €5 million in drugs at airports and ports.

The largest value in drugs seized was for heroin, with €2.1m worth of the drug found in five different searches.

This was followed by cocaine, with €1.3m worth found in 31 seizures.

One of the largest quantities of a drug seized was of Khat, with 168kg found in four searches this year. The plant is a green-leafed drug producing a euphoric effect when chewed.

In the first six months, customs also seized 123kg of herbal cannabis as well as small quantities of ecstasy and LSD.

A total of 1,219 drug seizures were made for the first half of the year, compared with 1,523 for the whole of 2006.

Figures did not include the massive cocaine haul off the Cork coast last week.