Police yesterday continued to grill baggage handlers in connection with a 50-pound cocaine bust at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), Timehri on Thursday night.
Acting Police Commis-sioner, Leroy Brumell told Stabroek News last evening that there has not been a breakthrough in the police investigation. He said that several employees who were on duty on the evening of the drug find are being interrogated by the police in connection with the incident.
This newspaper was told that several baggage handlers, attached to two airport ground handling services at the CJIA, are being viewed as the prime suspects in the incident.
On Thursday night the $25M worth of cocaine was intercepted by law enforcement agencies at the CJIA in a bag which was on a trolley being prepared for loading on an outgoing Caribbean Airlines flight which was expected to depart for the JFK airport in New York sometime after midnight on Thursday.
The police stated that around 11:20 pm, police ranks searched an unclaimed bag without a name tag that was seen in the loading area at the CJIA. The drugs were wrapped in plastic in more than 20 parcels.
A source told this newspaper that while it remains unclear how the drugs arrived at the loading area, anti-narcotic agents are working to determine whether the airport perimeter fence as well as the ground handling services, among other avenues, were used by the drug traffickers to breach the security apparatus there. In March this year, two duffle bags containing 10 kilos of cocaine were found on the airside of the CJIA near the perimeter fence. An engineer attached to a local airline stumbled upon the two bags while working in the area.
No one was charged in connection with that incident.
