Pigeon stuffed with cocaine caught by guards as it tries to fly into prison

Prison authorities were unsurprised by the find

The pigeon in custody (Reuters)

Guards have captured a pigeon flying cocaine and cannabis into a prison in Costa Rica.

La Reforma prison guards in San Rafael de Alajuela, Costa Rica, captured the bird as it flew 14 grams of cocaine and 14 grams of cannabis into the facility stuffed into a pouch attached to its body.

Paul Bertozzi, director of the police, confirmed reports that at around 2pm on Wednesday jailers saw the pigeon flying of the walls and towards the centre of the prison.

(Reuters)

(Reuters)

A mugshot of the bird, caught by security officers and taken into custody, was released by Costa Rica’s Department of Justice and Peace as a warning to be vigilant for Narcopalomas.

Narcopalomas, loosely translated as ‘drugs doves’, have been used by prisoners and their accomplices in the past– similar birds have been caught in prisons in Colombia, Argentina and even Bosnia.

Mr Bertozzi said the pigeon was “nothing new” and that drug traffickers were using “unimaginable ways to achieve their macabre atrocities”.

“In the past (the traffickers) have used cats and dogs to pass drugs to prisoners. Now it seems they are using pigeons to carry in their wares from the outside," he told Spanish news agency Efe.

The latest such example hardly surprised prison authorities though: iguanas, dogs and cats have been used in the past to smuggle illegal substances into the jail.