SHOCKING new figures have revealed the full extent of the deadly weapons and hard drugs seized each year at London's largest mail sorting office.
Customs officers from the UK Border Agency (UKBA) have seized 1,700 offensive weapons from packages intercepted at Mount Pleasant Sorting office, in Farringdon Road, Finsbury, since last April.
The macabre haul includes flick knives, firearms, pepper sprays, samurai swords and even stun guns disguised as mobile phones.
Among the more disturbing discoveries were four hand grenades sent to a UK address from America which had passed undetected through US airport security under the postal description "pineapple paperweights".
Wayne Lewis, UKBA's senior officer at Mount Pleasant operation, said: "It's an area people don't realise exists here but it's a significant operation and there are substantial seizures made.
"What shocked me when I first started was the amount of weapons that people send through Royal Mail. I've never seen a set of knuckledusters on the streets but it's something that comes through every day here." UKBA staff also intercepted almost £2million in heroin, cocaine, cannabis and ketamine at Mount Pleasant in the last financial year - plus 7.5million of contraband cigarettes, 4.5tonnes of rolling tobacco and suspected terrorist documents.
Mr Lewis said: "Offensive weapons are pretty constant but ketamine has increased as it becomes the popular fashionable drug."
Many of the seizures made at Mount Pleasant are the result of tip-offs from police and security services across the globe and are directly linked to serious organised crime syndicates. The weapons are handed over to the police while the contraband drugs and cigarettes are held in padlocked stores before being sent away to be incinerated.
The UKBA's smuggling operations manager at Mount Pleasant, who asked not to be named or photographed for security reasons, said: "Legally we can't open any of the packets so everything is 100 per cent X-rayed. We have a number of ways of targeting the mail and a lot of it is acting on intelligence reports.
"There are a number of countries that produce weapons anyway, the USA being a prime example or Eastern Europe.
"You get some very nasty things through here, everyday objects like pens and combs with concealed weapons in. Nowadays you can fit a stun gun in a cigarette packet, anything up to 2million volts. The police are only too happy to take them off us. From little acorns they can find much more."
He added: "In terms of drugs there's a lot of criminal activity. Any crime of that nature and severity will inevitably be linked to bigger organisations. What we find here is just the tip of the iceberg.