Oz couldn't take it 2965

Dave Baker

Not sure if it came via an airline official as such, but it was mentioned in the judgement. There seemed to be no suggestion from any quarter that she had access to her bags after check in at Brisbane. Baggage of domestic pbuttengers at Sydney going to an international flight is bulk transported from the domestic terminal to the international terminal (quite a distance) and pax take a shuttle bus or taxi. On the subject of the judgment I'm curious if an English transcript will become publicly available as I am sure that many people would like to read it in its entirety.

If they are going to go through a bag they will normally be gloved, if they suspect drugs (and in Corbys case they did - a drug sniffer dog had reacted to the board bag) then they will *definitely* be gloved before they open it to avoid contaminating evidence. If they only open a bag and look they may not be gloved. AFAIK, Customs policy is that they must be gloved before touching the *contents* of any bag, both to prevent possible contamination of possible evidence and as a personal protective measure against contact with undesirable substances in the bag. I'm not sure if you have ever seen a tv program here called 'Border Security", but they show various such happenings at Sydney Airport Customs and every time they have gone through a bag suspected of containing contraband they have been gloved. This also includes those in the mail examination centre where packages are xrayed and inspected. This is a documentary show with real travellers, real customs and immigration staff and real drug smugglers (at times) not fiction with actors.

No disrespect mate, but that's hair splitting. What it demonstrates is that there are handlers at at least one Australian International Airport involved in narcotics trafficing. They happened to get caught with sugar, it's by no means impossible they sometimes handled other narcotics.

The CO