They have previously caught other animals such as cats and iguanas trying to transport drugs into the prison in San Rafael de Alajuela, local websites have reported.
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Strapped to its body was a pouch containing 14g of cocaine and a similar weight of marijuana, destined for an unknown recipient in the jail’s medium-security wing.
A pigeon smuggling cocaine and cannabis into a prison in Costa Rica has been caught by guards.
The bird was being used in a freaky attempt to sneak the narcotics to inmates being held at the La Reforma Penitentiary prison.
“Drug traffickers are using unimaginable ways to achieve their macabre atrocities”, he said, in comments reported by Sky News.
“This is nothing new”.
The bird, which has affectionately been nicknamed “narcopigeon” (narcopaloma) by Costa Ricans, has been handed over by the authorities to a zoo, where it is being kept under observation before being housed in a larger enclosure. Memes about the #NarcoPaloma flooded social media, with some even joking that pigeons in the country are threatening to take over if their “comrade” is not released, according to Tico Times.
Paul Bertozzi added: ‘We have a warning that this method can be used again as it is not the first time in the history of La Reforma that a pigeon was detected with drugs’.
In May, police in India detained a pigeon on suspicion of spying for rival Pakistan, after a 14 year-old in the village of Manwal, near the India-Pakistan border, found a note in Urdu under the pigeon’s feathers.
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It was later taken to a zoological bird refuge.
