The specialist canine unit was deployed at Malpensa airport in Italy to screen passengers and their luggage after a flight from the Dominican Republic – after drug couriers previously used the route – police said in a statement. When a dog alerted officers to the traveller, police first searched his luggage, which turned up nothing, but discovered the drugs after cutting through the upholstery of the wheelchair. The passenger, a Hispanic man who asked airport workers to help guide the wheelchair, then stood up and walked unaided before being taken into custody, police said. The passenger was taken to a local jail, where judicial authorities upheld his detention pending an investigation into the case, the statement said. Officers said the 11 packages of cocaine, weighing 13.35 kilograms, could have made 27,000 individual doses and were worth about $1.2 million.
