Le Figaro Nice
Three women and a man of Colombian nationality were sentenced by the Nice court (Alpes-Maritimes) to 20 months in prison for transporting drugs “in corpore” on February 20. They were arrested by customs officers at the Nice airport and analyzes confirmed that they had each ingested cocaine capsules. They had divided three kilos for an amount of such merchandise estimated at nearly 200,000 euros.
The four individuals aged 21, 24, 25 and 31 were traveling without any luggage from Bogota and after a stopover in Paris Charles-de-Gaulle, which had alerted the customs services. A first x-ray immediately confirmed their suspicions. After a visit to the hospital, the four people, originally from Cucuta, were placed in pre-trial detention pending their trial.
Debts
During the hearing, they explained that they had debts to pay off,
Nice-Matin
reported , and that they had had to follow a strict diet to be able to ingest these substances. A contact was to pick them up when they got off the plane in Nice. Investigators are still wondering who this merchandise was intended for. The Italian market is a lead since a transalpine telephone number was found on one of the defendants' cell phones.
Found guilty, they are therefore kept in a remand center. They also received a customs fine of 20,000 euros per person and upon their exit, they will be prohibited from staying on French territory. For these acts, they risked up to 10 years in prison.