Irishman arrested with 18 kilos of drugs at Alicante airport

If you bet on something that could go wrong, you could lose. This happened recently to an Irish passenger who was going to fly from Alicante-Elche airport to Liverpool in the UK. He thought that no one would find out that he had 18 kg of hashish in his checked luggage, but they did. The Civil Guard caught him after private security guards found the drug in the luggage when they ran it through an X-ray machine. The 36-year-old suspect was freed on bail after being taken to the Elche duty court, where his lawyer, Jorge Martínez Navas, helped him.

The Irish tourist was caught at the Alicante-Elche airport at the end of January. The Guardia Civil’s Fiscal and Border Analysis and Investigation Unit (UDAIFF) was notified by the luggage check service on 25 January in the afternoon. People working as private security at the airport said that when a bag went through an X-ray machine, they saw that it might have something illegal inside.

An X-ray was done on the suitcase

The suitcase was taken to the airport’s baggage claim area, where the Guardia Civil looked at it again with an X-ray machine and found some things that looked like acorns, which made them think it might contain drugs.

After that, the Guardia Civil moved to find the passenger whose bag it was. He was caught at one of the boarding gates, just as he was about to get on a Ryanair flight to Liverpool. The cops introduced themselves to the passenger and asked him to come with them to check his bags.

The Irish citizen willingly went with the Civil Guard, and the suitcase was opened while he was there. Along with shoes and clothes, they found several vacuum-sealed bags inside that were full of drug nuts. The bags were weighed by the Civil Guard, who found that they held just over 18 kilogrammes of hashish. The drugs were sent to the Health Department of the Government Subdelegation in Alicante without their plastic wrappers so that they could be analysed and weighed.

The Civil Guard believe he is responsible for drug trafficking and smuggling. The 36-year-old Irish man who was arrested was helped by his lawyer Jorge Martínez Navas. He used his right not to give a statement at both the Civil Guard facilities and the duty court in Elche, which let him go with the condition that he show up in court every fifteen days.