Cruise ship cocaine grans arrested

Spanish police say they have smashed a drug trafficking ring which used old age pensioners as “mules” to smuggle cocaine into the country on transatlantic cruises.
Two elderly women were among nine people arrested in Cadiz as they were about to bring the drugs ashore. The women’s cabin, on the unidentified cruise ship, was found to contain 27 kg (59 lbs) of pure cocaine.
“The group included members of an advanced age who boarded luxury transatlantic cruises to pick up the narcotic in South America. The ‘mules’ would pass themselves off as tourists,” said a police spokesman.
Another seven members of the group were also arrested, including two who were to collect the drugs from the women when their ship docked in Spain, and the alleged leader of the operation who attempted to escape back to Brazil.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, three women suspected of drug smuggling have been arrested on the cruise ship Norwegian Spirit
Police in Willemstad, Curacao, in the Dutch Antilles, followed two of the women from a local house back to the ship, where they were found to have packages of cocaine strapped to their bodies. There was about 9kg (20 lb) of the drug in their cabin.
The women, aged 36, 28 and 19, are from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The ship, which docked in Willemstad on Sunday, is on a 12-day cruise from New Orleans to Boston
Last year, three young women and a man were arrested in Southampton when they tried to bring 20kg of cocaine worth £1.75 million ashore from the P&O cruise ship Arcadia after a cruise to the Caribbean.
They aroused suspicion because they were the only passengers on the ship who were not pensioners.