Aboutaleb criticizes broken drug scanners in Curaçao during a visit

Broken drug scanners in Curaçao pose a danger to the Netherlands, says Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb. Both at the airport and in the port, most scanners have been broken for years, according to the mayor, and this makes Curaçao an open door for the export of drugs to the Netherlands.
Aboutaleb was in Willemstad for a five-day visit and has since left for Colombia. When he returns to the Netherlands, he wants to talk to politicians in The Hague to raise the issue. In Curaçao he already spoke with Minister of Justice Quincy Girigorie, among others. According to Girigorie, the body scanner at the airport that checks for swallowed drugs does work. This was put into use in 2003 . He cannot make any statements about the port, reports the NOS .

The Rotterdam mayor emphasized the bond between Curaçao and his city, where 22,000 Curaçaoans live. The city and the island work together in the areas of security, economy and education, but Aboutaleb wants investigative services to come into closer contact with each other. In this way ‘a small stubborn group’ can be monitored when traveling back and forth. “I want – so to speak – that if the passport of one of them goes through the scanner here in Curaçao, a light comes on at Schiphol and vice versa.”

Since 2016, airline KLM has been helping the government to reduce drug trafficking from Curacao, Aruba, St Maarten, Bonaire, Suriname and Venezuela. Persons who have been ‘blacklisted’ by the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are refused by the company if they want to board a plane from or to the Netherlands . The people on this list were previously arrested at Schiphol with cocaine in their possession. Their name will remain on the list for three years.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/aboutaleb-laakt-tijdens-bezoek-kapotte-drugsscanners-op-curacao~bbd3d648/