Spain---Cocaine-filled pineapples seized by officials

Spanish police have seized 67 kilos of cocaine hidden in hollowed out pineapples, with wax cylinders used to hide the giveaway odor from sniffer dogs. The Spanish national police force announced that on 26 Aug. they had arrested seven people in connection with the cocaine seizure in in Madrid. Each pineapple contained around 1 kilogram of cocaine, described by police as "perfectly hollowed out and stuffed with compact cylinders." Police said the wax cylinders were used to conceal "odours of the chemical products which the drug contains and avoid its detection". Spanish police released video footage of the find, with officers smashing open each individual fruit to extract the cylinders and drugs inside. Authorities said that they had stumbled across intelligence on the pineapple shipment as they investigated other drug traffickers that used the same "modus operandum" of smuggling inside fruit shipments. \ The intelligence revealed the shipment would come from South America. The police identified the shipment, knowing it would travel from Puerto Rica to the port of  Setúbal in Portugal, and then via road to MercaMadrid. When the truck arrived in the Spanish capital and started unloading, agents then swooped. Seven people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in drug smuggling— four in Madrid and three in Barcelona. It isn't the first time Spanish authorities have found cocaine smuggled in pineapples. In January, police seized over 700 kilos of cocaine hidden inside a shipment of pineapples after a joint investigation with Portuguese police, packed in the same yellow wax cylinders. The Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) is a key entry point for drugs to Europe—from Latin America and Africa.