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Faisal Ali Rao,Mumtaza Hussein,Siddiq Ahmed, Said Attar Hussein, they attempted to smuggle drugs


Faisal Ali Rao, 26, Mumtaza Hussein, 33, Siddiq Ahmed, 43 and 64-year-old Said Attar Hussein were observed “behaving suspiciously” at the airport on 29 March.They have been arrested in a joint operation between customs and police as they attempted to smuggle drugs via the Maldives to Tanzania.The four from Pakistan were arrested on 29 March at Malé’s Hulhule International Airport, having swallowed a total of 189 capsules of heroin between them. Information was then passed to police, who arrested the Tanzanian on 6 April.The arrests highlight the use of Maldives as a trans shipment point for narcotics, which drug demand reduction officer Kunal Kishore, of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), says is on the rise.
“Maldives is in the process of evolving as a big transit point,” said Kishore. “I think it will increase.”Arriving from Karachi via Colombo, they were arrested and sent to Malé’s Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital, where they were found to have swallowed a total of 189 “bullets” of heroin between them. Information was then passed to police, whose drug enforcement unit conducted a special operation and arrested Derek Hugh Kasimbe, 39, a Tanzanian citizen, on 6 April after he entered Maldives on a tourist visa.“The drugs were being imported to Maldives with the intention of exporting them to Tanzania,” said police in a statement.Whilst the Maldives’ own narcotics market is estimated to be worth US $50 million per year, a 2003 report by the US State Department said that though Maldives was not then used as a transit point, but “international observers and some government officials remain wary about the country's potential to become a transshipment point for smugglers.”
Though the five recent arrests occurred at the airport, the greatest risk relates to shipping and the extent of Maldives’ coastline, said Kishore.
“It comes in on ships, and they dump it in the sea,” he said. “It’s an organised route, with another gang picking it up from there. They should check all ships [for drugs].”Over a ton of cannabis discovered on the floor of the Alif Alif Maavaru lagoon in April 2006, the largest ever drugs find in the country.
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