Mules use suitcases, their clothes and their own bodies to smuggle drugs [Al Jazeera]

Sao Paulo's international airport is quickly becoming the single busiest transit airport for cocaine-smuggling from Latin America to Europe via Africa, Brazilian officials have told Al Jazeera.

As national authorities strangle drug-trafficking channels via North America, Sao Paulo's Guarulhos-Governador Andre Franco Montoro International Airport has become the preferred exit point for mules, the term used to refer to people who try to sneak drugs across borders.

Last year, police seized a record 2.1 tonnes of cocaine and authorities expect the amount of cocaine seized at Guarulhos this year to break records.

In only the first three weeks of June 2009, 180kg of cocaine were confiscated from mules travelling to multiple international destinations, Mario Menin Junior, the airport's federal police chief, told Al Jazeera 

"The drug-producing countries, like Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, use Brazil as a transit country and a lot of drugs pass through this airport," Menin Junior said.

"Month after month, the amount of drugs passing through here, and what we are confiscating, continues to increase."

Meeting demand

Menin says the most popular routes for mules are S Africa, Spain and Holland [Al Jazeera]

Guarulhos International Airport is the busiest travel hub in South America, connecting Brazil with 53 other countries.

The range of connections is a major attraction to traffickers looking to export drugs quickly.

Direct flights to nearly every country in North and South America, as well as several in Europe and Africa, leave the airport. A direct flight to Dubai started last year.

Menin Junior says that routes for mules are usually chosen based on how tight security is at the arrival destination.

He says the most popular routes for cocaine mules from Sao Paulo are Holland, Spain and South Africa, all of which have direct connections from Guarulhos.

The federal police at Guarulhos airport are, on average, arresting four people a day trying to board flights with cocaine hidden in their luggage or undergarments, or ingested in capsules.

Menin Junior says the increase in the use of mules is due to the fact that police were able to dismantle a multi-million dollar international drug-trafficking network at the airport in 2008.

Thirty-two people were arrested in a recent security sweep. Those apprehended included airline workers, a customs official, and tarmac workers who were loading suitcases full of illegal drugs onto aircraft cargo holds.

Monitoring 'mules'

An elite group of specially-trained undercover federal police officers is stationed at the airport, to monitor passengers and look for suspicious activity.

Drugs are seized from suspected mules and tested [Al Jazeera]

When she got to the check-in counter, agents discovered she was a German citizen that was heading from Sao Paulo to Senegal via Madrid, Spain.

Her story arose suspicion among the undercover agents who discreetly took her to the police station inside the airport and picked though the clothes in her luggage.

An agent cut open the lining of her suitcase and found a white powder tightly packed inside a plastic bag covered in aluminium foil.

The agent tested the substance and it came back positive – it was pure powder cocaine; 2.1kg - an amount worth tens of thousands of dollars on the streets of London.

The woman, who sat emotionless throughout the search, was taken to the airport jail to await transfer to a Sao Paulo city prison. She declined to be interviewed by Al Jazeera.

The cocaine seized from the woman's suitcase was tagged and then put in a special locked room, where it would remain until destroyed.

Women's plight

Data reveals that the number of foreign women trafficking drugs out of Brazil is on the rise, according to Heidi Cerneka, national co-ordinator of the Prison Pastoral Ministry and one of Brazil's leading experts on women in prison.

Sao Paulo has a special jail for women mules. It currently houses women from more than 30 countries, with most of the foreigners from South Africa.

When the women are eventually released, their hardships are often just beginning. Most don't have the money to buy a ticket home and are prohibited from legally working in Brazil, according to Cerneka.

'Angela' from Angola told Al Jazeera that she has spent nearly two years in jail after being caught with drugs that she had ingested.

She said she didn't want to traffic drugs but took the job owing to her poor financial state.

"My life was difficult in Angola, that is why I got involved in drugs," Angela said. Her mother and father were killed during Angola's civil war.

"You study but have no work, so when someone offers you $1,000 to transport drugs, you take it."

Risky mission

Angela was given $200 and a plane ticket to Brazil. When she arrived in the country, she was told to go to a hotel in Sao Paulo to meet someone who would tell her how to smuggle the drugs back.

But before she could even attempt to board a plane back to Angola, she was caught on a bus and arrested. It was the first time she had ever transported drugs, she says.

"Angela" said financial conditions forced her to become a mule [Al Jazeera]

"For me it’s most often an economic question, not a criminal question," she says.

"These women are at the bottom of the rung in the international drug trade. They need money to survive and see this as a way out.

"For those who completed their time in prison their option is to wait for deportation or work clandestinely to make money to pay their ticket home."

Police at Guarulhos airport say the woman from Germany can expect to spend between three and 15 years of her life in a Sao Paulo prison, depending on how a judge views her case.

But the demand for cocaine remains - and so do the people who tempt fate to deliver it.