The expert spoke about the differences between drug couriers and honest passengers.

The discovery of drugs in hand luggage alone is not enough to accuse a passenger of involvement in drug trafficking and smuggling, as criminals often use honest people blindly for their own purposes, said Sergey Pelikha, an expert on international organized crime and former head of the anti-drug unit of the Investigative Department of the Russian Interior Ministry.

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"Couriers are being arrested or detained for a while, which the mafia uses for its own purposes blindly all over the world, not only in Russia," says the former investigator.

It is clarified that almost every passenger with a "forbidden" card or the driver, in whose car the "secret" cargo was found, claims that he is not involved. Their guilt is proved in combination with other data.

"For example, if a person's phone has correspondence with drug dealers or unambiguous messages about the cargo, his guilt is clear," says a retired Interior Ministry officer.

Pelikha added that if the drug cache was made in the design of the car, it is hard to believe that the driver did not know about such an upgrade. The same can be said about hand luggage. Investigators are also analyzing other traces, such as hand washes and so on.

According to him, the investigator has the duty to prove not only the guilt of a person, but also his innocence. Today, the police and intelligence agencies have enough tools to establish the truth. For example, "lie detectors" are widely used.

"In my practice, we involved specialist scientists who could reasonably assume from the facial expressions and gestures of the interrogated person whether he was lying or telling the truth," says Pelich.

These experts help the investigator to conduct the interrogation in the right direction, without wasting time on those who are not of interest. After the interrogation, the specialist provides the investigator with a conclusion.

Read more about how the drug mafia uses innocent people as drug transporters in the Izvestia article:

Suffering blindly: how the drug mafia turns honest people into couriers

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