Diplomatic Bag - Unusual Shipments

Unusual Shipments

• Some countries with corrupt governments have allegedly used diplomatic immunity to smuggle drugs, which was mentioned by English journalist Tony Thompson in his book Gangs: A Journey into the Heart of the British Underworld.
• During World War II, Winston Churchill reportedly received shipments of Cuban cigars by this means.
• In 1964, a Moroccan-born Israeli double agent named Mordechai Ben Masoud Louk (also known as Josef Dahan) was drugged, bound, and placed in a diplomatic bag at the Egyptian Embassy in Rome, but was rescued by the Italians. The crate that he had been placed in appeared to have been used for a similar purpose before, possibly for an Egyptian military official who had defected to Italy several years before but then disappeared without a trace before reappearing under Egyptian custody and facing trial.
• During the 1982 Falklands War, the Argentine government used a diplomatic bag to smuggle several Limpet mines to their embassy in Spain, to be used in the covert Operation Algeciras, in which Argentine agents were to blow up a British warship in the Royal Navy Dockyard at Gibraltar. The plot was uncovered and stopped by the Spanish Police before the explosives could be set.
• In the 1984 Dikko Affair, a former Nigerian government minister, was kidnapped and placed in a shipping crate, in an attempt to transport him from the United Kingdom back to Nigeria for trial. However, it was not marked as a diplomatic bag, which allowed British customs to open it.
• In 1984, the Sterling submachine gun used to shoot dead WPC Yvonne Fletcher from inside the Libyan Embassy in London was smuggled out of the UK in one of 21 diplomatic bags.
• In March 2000 Zimbabwe created an international incident when it opened a British diplomatic shipment.
• In May 2008, a replacement pump for the toilet on the International Space Station was sent in a diplomatic pouch from Russia to the United States in order to arrive before liftoff of the next shuttle mission.
• In 2012, a 16 kg shipment of cocaine was sent to the United Nations in New York in a bag masquerading as a diplomatic pouch.
• In January 2012, Italy detected 40 kilograms of cocaine smuggled in a diplomatic pouch from Ecuador, arresting five. Ecuador insisted it had inspected the shipment for drugs at the foreign ministry before it was sent to Milan.