Peru - Cocaine traffickers hide 2.8 tons of drugs in bird droppings

[Heretic.Ape.]

Innovative traffickers hid 2.8 tons of cocaine in thousands of pounds of bird droppings, Peruvian police said after uncovering the latest ruse to conceal drug shipments.


Cocaine exporters in Peru, the world’s second-biggest producer of the drug, after neighbouring Colombia, counted on the malodorous ammonia-smell of the dung, which is sold as a high-end organic fertiliser, to trick sniffer dogs trained to find drugs at ports of entry.
Guano, as the dung is known in Spanish, is the excrement of sea birds, bats and seals and is rich in nitrates and phosphorous. The cocaine was hidden in 400 bags of guano that together weighed 20 tons and was bound for Europe.
“The organic products camouflaged the cocaine by neutralising it to avoid detection,” police said after a five-month investigation that led to the seizure at a warehouse in Lima about 10 days ago.
Five people were arrested, including one Colombian man, police said.
Guano accumulates as white mounds on the islands along the coasts of Peru and Chile that are inhabited by birds such as pelicans.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...droppings.html It was once one of the world’s most valuable commodities, and Bolivia, Peru and Chile fought over its control in the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific.