Lebanese man swallows 220 diamonds in smuggling bid
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Buy SPH photosJOHANNESBURG (AFP) - South African police on Wednesday said they had caught a Lebanese man who swallowed 220 polished diamonds in an audacious bid to smuggle them from Johannesburg to Dubai.
Officers arrested the 25-year-old at Johannesburg's international airport carrying the gems, worth an estimated US$2.3 million (S$2.82 million).
"We nabbed him just before he went through the security checkpoint," said Mr Paul Ramaloko, spokesman of the South Africa elite police unit, the Hawks.
"We had to take him through the X-ray and take them out from his body," he said.
