An 11-year-old Colombian girl narrowly escaped death after her father apparently made her swallow more than 100 cocaine-filled capsules to smuggle the drugs into Europe.
The girl was in critical condition Wednesday after doctors removed 104 capsules with a total of about half a kilogram of narcotics, according to police in the southwestern city of Cali. She has yet to regain consciousness.
“Everything indicates that it was cocaine,” Cali police chief Hoover Penilla told reporters, adding that the use of a minor was “perverse”.
The girl’s father dropped her off at the hospital on Sunday when the girl complained of abdominal pain. Her mother accompanied her at the hospital, according to Jhon Arley Murillo, regional director of the Colombian child welfare agency ICBF. Police are now searching for the father who is suspected of forcing the girl to ingest the capsules.
Drug traffickers have long used travellers as human couriers to transport illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin packed in latex capsules which are swallowed. Once at their destination, the “mules” expel the capsules after taking laxatives.
The girl from Cali is believed to be the youngest mule ever detected, Cali police said.
During a search of the girl’s home, official found passports and the stub of a boarding pass in the father’s name that showed he had travelled from Barcelona to Cali via Madrid on 15 October. Police said the girl was to travel on Wednesday with her father to Madrid via Bogotá.
Murillo said migration officials had determined that the girl had travelled to Spain in March and stayed for two months but did not know whether she transported drugs on that trip.
The girl, whose identity was not revealed, will be placed in the custody of protective services while investigators try to determine whether her mother was also involved.
“This case is an aberration, as it put the life of an 11-year-old child in danger. That is why we will take all necessary measures to provide protection to the minor and take her away from the harmful environment,” said Murillo.
He added that the girl could be released from the hospital in about 10 days.
