Police arrested two South African nationals trying to leave Afghanistan’s main airport with two kilograms of heroin hidden in a photo album, an official said on Friday.
The men, carrying doctored South African passports, were trying to fly to China on Thursday, airport police chief Aminaullah Khan told Agence France-Presse.
Interpol in South Africa had alerted Afghan authorities that the men were in Afghanistan, an interior ministry official said. They had arrived from Pakistan, the official said.
Police also found that the men had a telephone number of a former Ariana Afghan Airlines worker. Khan has in the past alleged that some staff members of the national carrier are involved in drug trafficking.
Nearly a dozen foreign nationals, including five Nigerians, have been arrested at Kabul airport on narcotics charges in the past months.
Afghanistan is the world’s top producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, which is also made here often in small makeshift laboratories.
The country, its economy has ruined by 25 years of war, produces more than 4 000 tonnes of opium annually, nearly 90% of the world’s total. – Sapa-AFP