Airline Luggage Lag Foils Smuggling Bid

YERUSHALAYIM (Reuters) – The global backlog in airline baggage loading has had a silver lining for Israeli police, who discovered a haul of illegal substances hidden in a suitcase that was X-rayed after it arrived a day late and went unclaimed.

The tinfoil-wrapped 7 kilograms (15 lb) of illegal substances – worth some $600,000 – were in a false bottom of the bag, which police allowed to be sent from Ben Gurion Airport to the Yerushalayim address its owner had listed in his lost-and-found complaint, Kan News said.

The suspect turned up to retrieve it and was arrested.

“We are in a period where many people having been losing their suitcase – and he was one of them,” police investigator Eran Asraf told Kan.