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RE: The Story of How I Got Detained for Drugs at the Norwegian Border
Next??? There was an elephant with a large trunk who blew out the story... (that is what we tell the kids in the Netherlands)
I'm sorry that you had to go through this, it is unbelievable that they would put you in a cell just based on suspicion. Seems like abuse of power to me. I hope they let you go...
That's the cliffhanger, isn't it? It was classic profiling as profiling could be. You know who really smuggles drugs? It's the normal people from Norway that pass through those borders every day. Why pick me?
because everyone hates the French except the French ;) (oh, I do hope that I won't get downvotes for this)
Why? It's funny!
Not everyone gets my sense of humour ;)
Oh, trust me, nobody gets mine ;)
sounds like a challenge to me :)
I'm for sure no drug smuggler, but I can attest that it's extremely rare to be stopped at the Norwegian/Swedish border, regardless of transportation mode. I must admit that some few times after arriving at home I've started counting the amount of alcoholic beverages we bought abroad and realized ... damn, I would have had to serve prison time if they had stopped me!
This summer it's been a bit extreme though. Already previous summer I observed customs people stopping cars coming out from a ferry from Sweden. This summer I've been travelling quite much between Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Oslo, and I've had my ID documents checked several times, and questions about my luggage once (but he didn't want to inspect it). There was one dude on the train that ran into problems after going from Copenhagen to Malmö because he didn't have a passport. It's probably due to the immigration "crisis". Usually the customs only care about inbound traffic, but once there was even customs officers going through the train on the outbound trip. They stopped a random dude and asked if he had cash with him - but he just said "no" and they continued. I actually had significant amounts of cash with me on that trip, and was uncertain on how much it's allowed to bring over the borders.
I heard of a friend of my wife hitch hiking, I believe it was over the Russian/Norwegian border ... she was rather unlucky, the car she got a hitch with was indeed smuggling drugs - hidden in the seats of the car. I think she didn't get into legal troubles due to that, but she got rather thorougly checked. I didn't hear anything about cavity searches though.
As for your experiences ... I can't believe they can have done this without having a very good reason for it. Maybe they were searching for someone else. Maybe they got some tip. Maybe someone hates you and tipped them off. No, the police can't search you like that without a probable cause, but the border customs can! We always joke about the cavity searches, I never thought they were doing that for real though.
I had some colleagues that traveled to Costa Rica - with transit tickets through some airport in the US. Transit. I've never heard about people having to go through customs control when being in transit on an international airport - but apparently in the US that's normal. On their return the customs officers was like opening the suitcase and just emptying it recklessly. They had to undress too, but no cavity search ... and they probably got to keep the underwear on. When the customs were done with the search, they got like ten seconds to get the clothes on, repack the bags and get out of there!
We've had quite some border experiences in the Eastern Europe and former Soviet ... but at least I've never had to undress or had cavity searches.