It’s a nightmare scenario for anyone traveling by air. You arrive at your destination, pick up your luggage from the belt and pass through customs, only to be stopped by officials. On opening your bags, they discover a stash of drugs mixed up with your belongings. Of course you didn’t pack the drugs – they must have been put there by someone at the airport you left from or arrived at. You know you are innocent but airport officials and the police don’t.
Airports in several countries have documented incidents such as this, when the bags of unsuspecting “mules” are targeted by criminal gangs. The operation is sophisticated, with some gang members “planted” in luggage areas and others waiting at the destination to “snatch” the bag if the target successfully passes through with the drugs stash.
Such is the case of a 21-year-old Mexican folk dancer who claims to have been a target of this kind of sting.
Lilia Angelica Lopez Negrete has been behind bars in a maximum-security federal prison for the past eight months after she was stopped at the Mexico City airport on a flight from Colombia, where she had gone for an audition.
Her lawyers say her luggage was carefully inspected at Bogota airport and that she boarded her Avianca flight without any problem.
Arriving in Mexico City, Lopez Negrete’s checked bag was the last one off the conveyor belt in the reclaim area. She was then stopped as she walked through the customs zone because, her father says, “they said her bag looked suspicious.”
Lopez Negrete was held in a room for several hours before the officers returned to inform her that her bag contained three kilos of cocaine, her father says.
Her family has launched a vigorous social media campaign to drum up support for Lopez Negrete, who denies she knew anything about the package allegedly found inside her bag.
Her father says he doesn’t know where the drugs were planted, whether in Colombia or at the Mexico City airport, but that his daughter is innocent of the charges. He does not rule out the possibility that customs officials planted the narcotics themselves, although he cannot provide an explanation as to why they might do this to a random traveler.
Another well-publicized case, also at the Mexico City airport and after a scheduled Avianca flight, involved university student Oscar Alvaro Montes de Oca, 23.
His bag did not appear on the reclaim belt after he had flown in from Argentina with a stopover in Lima, Peru. After registering his missing bag with the airline and, following a long wait, customs officers appeared with a bag bearing Montes de Oca’s name that contained 20 kilos of cocaine. Although the student insisted the bag didn’t belong to him, he was nonetheless arrested, hauled off to prison and charged with drug trafficking.
Late last week, only after airline officials finally confirmed that Montes de Oca’s registered bag was completely different to the one delivered to him at the Mexico City airport – it weighed ten, not 20 kilos, and was another color – was the student released from custody.
This week, Montes de Oca, who is receiving psychological treatment after his ordeal, said he totally believes Lopez Negrete’s versions of events and promised to help her in any way he can.