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CRIME

French cops find 21kg of coke in ‘tourist’ suitcase

A tourist at Nice airport got quite a fright this week when police found 21 kilos of cocaine stowed away in a suitcase labelled with his name.

Published: 3 April 2015 15:05 CEST
French cops find 21kg of coke in 'tourist' suitcase
The smugglers had checked in a suitcase falsely labelled with the tourist's name. Photo of Nice airport: Shutterstock

French customs on Friday announced that they had seized 21 kilos of cocaine from a suitcase at Nice Airport, southern France, France Info reported.

The drug stash, which was found in 18 packets, was placed in a suitcase belonging to a tourist travelling from the Dominican Republic.

However when questioned about the hoard the man was baffled and further investigations showed that the drugs had been placed in a suitcase fraudulently labelled with the tourist’s name.

The stash has an estimated street value of €1.3 million.

Last year French customs seized a total of six tonnes of cocaine.

One part of this came after a surgeon found a whopping 600g of cocaine inside a man’s stomach after he had complained of chronic stomach pains.

The man later admitted to ingesting the drugs on a recent trip to South America, with intent to smuggle it into France.  

Last September two men were jailed after they allegedly used an official Vatican vehicle to try to smuggle several kilos of cocaine and cannabis through France. 
 

CRIME

French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

A 14-year-old girl has died of a heart attack in eastern France after her school locked down to protect itself from a knife attacker who lightly wounded two other girls, an official said on Friday.

Published: 20 April 2024 08:58 CEST
French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

The teenager “was rescued by teachers who were very fast to call the fire department. She died at the end of the afternoon,” education official Olivier Faron said.

The girl’s middle school in the village of Souffelweyersheim closed its doors on Thursday afternoon after a man stabbed two other girls aged 7 and 11 outside a nearby primary facility.

“Sadly this pupil underwent an episode of very high stress that led to a heart attack,” Faron said.

A mother outside the middle school on Friday morning said her son in first year of secondary had also been scared during the lockdown the previous day.

“Whereas in the primary school they made it more like a game, perhaps here it was a little too direct,” Deborah Wendling said.

“He thought there was an armed person in the school. They could hear doors slamming, but in fact it was just other classrooms locking down.”

Faron defended the teachers.

READ ALSO: Schoolgirl threatens teacher with knife as tensions rise in French schools

“There is no perfect solution,” he said.

But “we will analyse in depth what happened. If there are lessons to be taken from this, we will take them.”

The two girls hurt in the attack were discharged from hospital on Thursday evening with only light wounds.

Police have arrested the 30-year-old assailant, and a probe has been opened into “attempted murder of minors”, the prosecutor’s office said.

It was not immediately clear what had motivated him, but it did not appear to be “a terrorist act”, it said.

He was “psychiatrically fragile” and appeared to have stopped his medication.

The incident follows a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday announced measures to crack down on teenage violence in and around schools.

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