{{A tip prompted South African police to run a scan on a Lebanese traveler flying out of the country and find 220 polished diamonds in his stomach.}}<\/p>\n
The traveler, who was 25 but not immediately identified, was arrested and administered a laxative to retrieve the gems which were valued at $2.3 million.<\/p>\n
He was arrested Tuesday night at the O.R. Tambo International Airport near Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was intercepted just as he was about to go through the security checkpoint. Then took him for a scan where we discovered where he was hiding the diamonds,\u201d said Capt. Paul Ramaloka of the South African Police Service. <\/p>\n
Police recovered the diamonds after giving the smuggling suspect laxatives.<\/p>\n
Ramaloka said investigators began following the man after receiving inside information about a possible diamond smuggling ring. They say he is a Lebanese national who was planning to fly to Dubai.<\/p>\n
In South Africa, one of the world\u2019s top producers of diamonds, investigators are always watching closely for diamond smugglers. <\/p>\n
Ramaloka believes their efforts have deterred much of the crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trend of people smuggling by ingesting substances used to be quite common but has now fallen off due to increased security,\u201d Ramaloka said.<\/p>\n
He said the last such incident was in January of this year when another Lebanese national was arrested at the airport with more than $1 million worth of diamonds in his stomach. <\/p>\n
Police are investigating if the cases are related. <\/p>\n
They are still working to find the source of the diamonds recovered this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A tip prompted South African police to run a scan on a Lebanese traveler flying out of the country and find 220 polished diamonds in his stomach.}} The traveler, who was 25 but not immediately identified, was arrested and administered a laxative to retrieve the gems which were valued at $2.3 million. He was arrested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-4146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4146"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=4146"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=4146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}