Apr 10 01:50 PM US/Eastern
NARITA, Japan, April 11 (AP) - (Kyodo)—A cargo shipment of roughly 350 military handguns that was meant to be transported from Germany to Turkey was mistakenly allowed into Japan after clearing customs at Narita airport last year, sources with knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
Customs officials successfully recovered all of the handguns after a hardware vendor in Chiba Prefecture, who received the mislabeled cargo, reported the matter to local police, according to the sources at the airport.
The handguns arrived at the airport in March last year in three wooden boxes bearing labels issued for items bound for the Japanese vendor. The boxes were treated as duty-free and cleared customs after only document screening.
The vendor had ordered duty-free hardware items and the labels for them were apparently attached to the boxes containing the handguns, they said.
The handguns were returned to the sender last November after customs officials determined there was no danger of the weapons reaching the domestic underground market or potential criminals in the future.
A customs official at Narita airport, which handled about 1.8 million tons of cargo last year, said it is virtually "impossible to check every single cargo item." The airport deployed two gun-sniffing dogs and a large-scale X-ray screening device in April last year as part of measures to prevent smuggling.
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