ANNEX C: HEATHROW AIRPORT VISIT NOTES
We visited Heathrow airport on 30 November 2009 to
observe customs detections operations.
Merger of customs into UKBA
- UKBA and HMRC are now one organisation,
with officers wearing the same uniform. Individual officers now
have both customs and immigration powers, although there remains
a legal distinction between officers of the two organisations
in terms of powers to search.
Risk profiling and targeting
- UKBA deploys risk-based targeting
based on a range of factors, including high-risk country of origin,
where a passenger bought a ticket (eg. in a different part of
the world that that which the ticket is for), an individual's
travel history (including countries visited), and flights which
are perennially problematic.
- Intelligence supplied by SOCA and UKBA overseas
forms a major part of risk profiling.
- The JBOC online booking system allows UKBA to
check individual flight bookings and profile flights for risk
factors. As eBorders is introduced it will be linked up to airline
systems and allow easier checking of travel histories.
Characteristics of drug couriers
- The nationality of drug couriers
varies - usually they are not Colombian, and often they are European.
One 'swallower' who went 50 days without visiting the toilet was
Irish. Often origin or transit countries will use European countries
with which they have historic links to transit drugs through:
eg. from French Guyana via France, or Dutch Antilles via Netherlands.
There is a mixture of male and female couriers.
Most effective way of disrupting smuggling
- UKBA considers exporting border
controls the most effective way to tackle drugs smuggling - eg.
Operations Airbridge (Jamaica) and Westbridge (Ghana). Airbridge
has reduced the amount of cocaine being couriered via air from
Jamaica to the UK to almost nil. UK officials have successfully
trained Jamaican officials. UKBA is hoping to replicate these
operations in other countries such as Nigeria.
Targets and measuring success
- Though seemingly slightly perverse,
a measure of UKBA's success in tackling cocaine trade might be
seen in a lower, rather than higher, level of seizures - this
would indicate that less cocaine is reaching the UK overall.
- The UKBA current target for cocaine seizures
was originally agreed between the Home Office and HMRC: 2,400
kgs of cocaine (12 months to the end of March 2010), and 500 kgs
of heroin (this has been met already).
- UKBA consider that targets/measures of success
should also include overseas seizures. It is possible to see some
displacement of drugs trafficking overseas as a result of activity
at Heathrow.
- Interaction with overseas partners is complex
in terms of targets, as it is hard to ensure that agencies are
not double counting. One way around this might be measuring successes
by 'UK Plc' rather than by individual agencies.
Equipment
- There are several possible
pieces of equipment which can be used to conduct scans of suspect
passengers:
- Body scanners (radiation detection)
which use low-frequency x rays
- 'Brijot' machine which scans for heat traces
(heat detection). This shows up black areas where things are concealed
- trained officers can often identify areas as drugs, cash bundles.
- Sentinel machine (trace detection) - blows air
at the passenger to pick up any traces of drugs coming off their
clothes.
Heathrow seizure figures
- In the past 24 hours at Heathrow
UKBA had seized:
- Two 0.5g packages of cocaine
- A 1kg package of cocaine (with a street value
of £50,000)
- cigarettes
- gun
- Other counterfeit items
- In the past year, 125kg of
heroin was seized from South Africa (the biggest seizure of the
year). Last year, 5.5 tonnes of cannabis was seized.
- It is more common for drugs to be seized little
and often than larger freight packages.
- There are 4 to 5 drugs 'swallowers' in detention
at any one time.
- Sniffer dogs on average generate 10 to 20 class
A seizures each month.
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