Moroccan customs officers have stepped up there hunt for drug smugglers in Tangiers

10:44 El NACHO 0 Comments

Moroccan customs officers have stepped up there hunt for drug smugglers in Tangiers, a short ferry hop from Europe's profitable shores.Smugglers coming through the northern port know they can't simply conceal their contraband under the floor or in the doors of their vehicle -- even behind the instrument panel or inside the petrol tank would be naive.Instead they are finding more and more ingenious places to hide their drugs or ways to fool the officials.The country's record haul for hashish seizures in 2007 suggests the law enforcers are at least keeping pace with a growing band of smugglers.In hundreds of operations last year, officers seized a total of 35 tonnes of hashish worth an estimated 140 million euros (215 million dollars) on the European market. That was more than 25 percent up on 2006.
Morocco's customers officers also arrested 437 people, half of them foreigners. Spanish nationals topped the list at 78, followed by 61 French nationals and 22 Portuguese.But Abdelhalek Marzouki, the director of customs for northern Morocco, admits that despite his team's apparent successes the smugglers learn quickly from their mistakes.Their capacity to innovate has been a source of constant surprise, he said. "They monitor how we operate in order to come up with new methods."Marzouki tells the recent story of one officer who, alerted by a tiny trace of welding near a vehicle's clutch, followed his instincts to discover a whole string of cannabis bricks, strung together like sausages.Officers have also discovered drugs inside the tyres of vehicles and even car batteries stuffed with cannabis resin.Another smuggler tried to disguise his haul as a cargo of olives, painting his drugs green and adding fake stalks.Every year, customs officers at Tangiers have to deal with a steady flow of foreign-registered vehicles: 380,000 cars and 80,000 lorries.
To get there, many will have passed through the northern Rif mountains, where according to government figures producers grow 1,200 tonnes of cannabis resin for export.In a vast car park, officials send about half the lorries past two scanners that check for hidden cargo.When it comes to the cars however, it's about instinct and experience, said Marzouki. The main tools of their trade, are "a screwdriver, a pair of sharp eyes and an extraordinary sixth sense."Any officer worth his salt knows there is no such thing as a typical smuggler, he added. "They are young people and the less young; couples or pretty girls," he explained.

"Before they didn't search luxury cars because they thought that smugglers wouldn't waste their money on that kind of vehicle, but recently they have been leasing them."
This year, officers even arrested a Spaniard travelling with his wife, his mother and their two little girls in a camping car.He tried to bluff his way through by flashing an out-of-date Spanish police identity card, clearly hoping that officials would not look twice at a family of holidaymakers.He was wrong and officers found him in possession of 1.3 tonnes of hashish.For France's consul general Alain Bricard, smugglers who use their own children to try to fool the police are beneath contempt.Last summer, he had to look after two twin girls and also a young boy after their respective parents were arrested on smuggling charges.For a week, these children were without a familiar face until relatives could get over from France to fetch them."I have the sad distinction of having under my consular (jurisdiction) the largest number of French prisoners in the world," he said.At present a total of 98 French nationals including six women are serving time in Moroccan prisons, he said.Tangiers prosecutor Echafi Abdelkrim said a large part of his time was spent with drugs cases."Foreign smugglers know they are playing with fire and that the trap can close on them because these are international networks who are using them to feed the foreign markets," he said.For those that get caught the cat-and-mouse game can turn nasty as they face up to 10 years behind bars.