U.S News

DETROIT – Baggage handlers working for Delta Air Lines Inc. conspired to smuggle drugs to city from airports in metropolis and Jamaica, polity said Thursday as malefactor complaints were unsealed against 12 people.

The handlers were paying to secure that destined suitcases were steered absent from planetary baggage belts and settled in carousels from husbandly incoming flights, Homeland Security businessperson Kurt Fiegel said in a suite filing.

The bags were scarred with a red "X" or had impressible bags or impressible ties on the handle, he said.

Ten of the 12 grouping charged were past or underway Delta baggage handlers, said Brian Moskowitz, head of investigations in Newmarket for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At a news conference, Moskowitz said the smuggling appeared to hit occurred over a "period of individual years," but he declined to enlarge or indicate the total turn of drugs that entered the U.S. from Jamaica.

The investigation began in Jan 2010 at the airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica, when 53 pounds of hemp was discovered in a suitcase extremity for Detroit, Fiegel said.

When Northwest Airlines grace 2321 landed in Detroit, polity seized fivesome suitcases with 284 pounds of hemp and 35 pounds of cocaine, the businessperson said. Delta is Northwest's parent company.

"A shipment of this size had almost no chance of flourishing entry to the United States" if it had absent finished the exemplary scrutiny process, Fiegel said in an affidavit filed to support the drug charges.

Delta issued a statement locution the employees hit been suspended without pay.

"Additional nonindulgent action could be condemned pending the test outcome of the investigation," the Atlanta-based company said.

The metropolis handicap of the investigation began in March 2010 when agents seized 45 pounds of hemp at the city airport.

The defendants prefabricated their initial suite attendance Thursday in Detroit, metropolis and southern California. Two grouping were inactive in metropolis and digit in California.

Moskowitz said the Delta employees insulted their admittance to planes and limited areas of the airports.

"There's no perfect system. It's a concern of managing risk," he said.

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