Brussels Airport brings in new body scanner to step up drug smuggling detection
A new body scanner has been inaugurated at Brussels Airport to allow officers to check more quickly whether people have swallowed drugs in order to smuggle them.
Until now, people suspected of smuggling drugs bodily first had to take a urine test and if it was positive, they were taken to hospital for a scan, according to Kristian Vanderwaeren, general administrator of Customs and Excise.
“That process often took three hours,” he said. “Now, after the urine test at the airport, we can perform the scan ourselves, which means the whole process takes less than an hour.”
Finance minister Jan Jambon at the launch of the body scanner © BELGA VIDEO MAARTEN WEYNANTS
The cocaine that smugglers or couriers carry internally is often 90 per cent pure, Vanderwaeren said. “If one of these packets bursts inside their body, it means certain death,” he said. The radiation to which they are exposed in the new scanner is also 100 times lower than that of the scanner used in the hospital.
Between 2020 and 2024, 305 drug couriers were intercepted at the airport, 79 of whom had swallowed or inserted drugs.
This is partly due to the increase in direct flights from Latin America and Africa, Vanderwaeren said. "Drug couriers arriving at the airport with cocaine usually arrive on flights from the Caribbean or other Latin American countries, while heroin mainly comes from Africa."
#FlandersNewsService | A Belgian customs officer shows ecstasy pills during a press conference about drug seizures at Brussels airport, December 2023 © PHOTO JOHN THYS / AFP
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