Britons held in Brazil accused of plotting to traffic cocaine

Police in Brazil have arrested three British men they claim were behind plans to set up a cocaine trafficking network between South America and the UK.

The men, identified by police as Nazan Hussain Ashiq, 28, and Balal Ali Khan, 28, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and William Jones, 51, from Bolton, were arrested on Wednesday afternoon at a luxury hotel in Foz do Iguaçu.

The city is a popular tourist destination on Brazil's border with Paraguay and Argentina and is a notorious hotspot for smuggling and drug traffickers.

A kilogram of pure cocaine and more than £50,000 in Brazilian reais were found in the hotel room the three men were sharing, police spokeswoman Caroline Musolino told the Guardian.

Three taxis with Paraguayan number plates had been confiscated, Ms Musolino said. Police believe the taxis were being used to ferry the cocaine, probably Bolivian, into Brazil.

Five Paraguayan men, who police believe were being used by the British men as drug mules to bring the drugs from Paraguay into Brazil, were also arrested.

Police said in a statement that the British men intended to smuggle about 10kg (22lb) of cocaine into the UK each week stashed inside loudspeakers, which were being prepared in the hotel room.

Little cocaine is produced in Brazil, but the country is a transit point for the drug, produced in neighbouring countries such as Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. A 2004 law, which authorised the Brazilian air force to shoot down unidentified planes in the country's airspace, led many drug traffickers to smuggle drugs by land across the borders with Paraguay and Bolivia.

More than 70% of the foreigners in Brazil's prison system are jailed on drug trafficking charges, according to a recent study. In Rio de Janeiro about 40% of the foreign inmates are from Europe.

The British Embassy in Brasilia said it was aware three men had been arrested but had not yet established their full identities or nationalities. Ms Musolino said it was the first time she had heard of British traffickers in the area. She said the men did not speak Portuguese and were being held in one cell at Foz do Iguaçu's federal police headquarters. Nearly all of the 49 men being held in the police station were accused of drug trafficking, she said.

The prisons on Brazil's western borders with Bolivia and Paraguay are filled with impoverished young men from all three countries who are often paid as little as 400 reais (£100) to smuggle cocaine into Brazil in their stomachs. The traffickers have had to become increasingly inventive, stashing cocaine in tyres and plaster casts, even dissolving it in water and soaking it into clothes or towels. The drugs supply the domestic market or go on to Europe, the US or South Africa.

Last month a 21-year-old British citizen was arrested in the north-east of Brazil as he tried to take a plane to Lisbon carrying 8.4kg of cocaine. He told police he was trying to take the drugs to South Africa.

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