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Toronto, Ontario -- Canada Customs officers are looking into an incident in which a black woman stripped below the waist in a public area of Pearson airport after being accused of drug smuggling. "It appears she disrobed voluntarily. It was a voluntary act in a very public area," Customs spokesman Mark Butler said yesterday. Butler said there was little he could say since the woman wasn't charged, but sources said the incident happened three weeks after Customs officers were accused of targeting black people for drugs upon returning from Jamaica. Airport workers said a Toronto woman, 20, arrived on the flight about 11 p.m. last Monday and a Terminal 2 Customs officer accused her of smuggling drugs in body cavities. The irate woman suddenly removed her pants and underwear in front of about 30 stunned people and bent down in front of the officer to show she had no drugs, workers said. "There's no drugs and there's no need to search me," the angry woman told the officer. The workers said the woman was told to put back on her clothes and was then taken to a local hospital to undergo drug checks before being released. Butler said X-rays and stool sample would be the usual drug checks at hospital. He said there's no report the woman was singled out or harassed, but Customs officials are looking into the incident. "We don't target passengers based on their ethnic background," Butler said of searching Jamaican flights. But he added, "certain parts of the world pose a higher risk for drugs." Copyright 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, news clippings are made available without profit for research and educational purposes. |
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