Nigeria arrests alleged Mexican drug kingpin at international airport

An alleged Mexican drug kingpin was arrested in Nigeria last month as he tried to leave the country, the drug enforcement authority has just revealed.

That arrest resulted in the discovery of a suspected industrial-scale methamphetamine laboratory - the third such find allegedly linked to Mexicans in four months.

When Arturo Carrera Loaiza, 40, was detained at Lagos international airport, officials allegedly found digital images of him wearing what they believed to be a laboratory coat alongside equipment consistent with meth production.

The pictures' location data led officers to a property in Ebonyi state, where they said chemicals and drug-making equipment were found.

Loaiza has denied involvement in methamphetamine production and said he had been invited to Nigeria by a local contact for a restaurant business venture, according to a statement from the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

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The agency's investigators found a CCTV memory card at the suspected laboratory in Ebonyi with footage from the property showing someone who looked like Loaiza wearing a blue laboratory coat. A Nigerian man was also identified directing people as they removed chemicals and equipment from the site.

NDLEA chairman Gen Mohamed Buba Marwa said further intelligence led officers to an isolated house in a neighbouring community, where they recovered chemicals, dehydrators, condensers, a reaction pot, weighing scales, mixers, drums, gas burners and a sieve containing traces of methamphetamine.