ISLAMABAD: The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) claims that increasingly foreigners, especially women with non-Pakistani passports, are being used to carry drugs out of Pakistan.

According to ANF statistics, the number of British drug peddlers who have been caught while smuggling drugs out has increased compared to the previous year.

From January 2013 to December 2013, the ANF prosecuted 37 foreigners in the Control of Narcotics Substances (CNS) courts across Pakistan. These included six British citizens, four Afghans, four Filipinos, one Dutch, while the remaining were from African countries.

However, in the first six months of this year, the ANF arrested 33 foreigners, including nine British citizens. Of these nine, two were British citizens from Luton, a town in Great Britain.

They were arrested on January 24, 2014 from Islamabad Airport for being in possession of 1.7kg heroin. The rest were British nationals of Pakistani origin. Others included five Nigerians, four Afghans, three Filipinos and a Turk and Dutch citizen.

All the accused people were arrested because they were found in possession of heroin at different airports. The ANF is not willing to view these numbers as random. “The involvement of foreigners especially the ever increasing numbers of British citizens is part of the ‘strategy’ of the drug mafia,” claimed retired Colonel Akhtar Abbas, director legal ANF.

He said earlier the traffickers thought it was ‘safe’ to use women and children as it was thought that they were able to escape detailed checking by the security staff.

However, once the security staff began paying greater attention to children and women, the traffickers changed tack.

Currently, he pointed out, foreign nationals, especially women, are considered to be effective carriers in drug trafficking – he added that British citizens were generally subjected to less scrutiny at Pakistan’s airports. Zarmeenah Rahim, a lawyer at UK-based Foundation for Fundamental Rights, an NGO, that assists detained British citizens in Pakistan said that most British citizens arrested by the ANF were basically ‘carriers’.

A carrier is an individual used for the transportation of drugs from one place to another. “Law enforcement agencies should concentrate on drug dealers; the arrest of ‘carriers’ has little impact on eradicating drug trafficking,” she added. She further said that sometime those arrested don’t even know that they are being used as ‘carriers’. She provided the details of one such case. British national Khadija Shah, 26, a resident of Birmingham, is being tried in the CNS court for carrying 63kg heroin. She was six months pregnant when she was arrested in May 2012.

In another case, Yasmin Akhtar, a British national of Pakistani origin, was recently arrested for carrying 15kg heroin to UK. She also claimed of being used as ‘carrier’.Shahzad Akbar, her counsel, told Dawn that Yasmin was brought to Pakistan by her fiancé earlier this year.

After getting married, her husband arranged her air ticket to UK and asked her to take his luggage along, promising to follow her in a couple of weeks. However, after Yasmin was apprehended at Islamabad’s airport, her husband went into hiding. The ANF registered the case against Yasmin and her husband before producing her before the CNS court of Rawalpindi.

According to the defence lawyers, these women were used as carriers by a drug cartel active in Pakistan and the UK.

They added that the women were deceived.

“In fact, they married these British women to use them as ‘carriers’,” said advocate Akbar, adding that the men brought these women to Pakistan and travelled around with them.

“Only after they had won their confidence, did the husbands hand over the bags and vanish,” he added.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2014