Officers arrested the 25-year-old at Johannesburg’s international airport carrying the gems, worth an estimated $2.3 million.
“We nabbed him just before he went through the security checkpoint,” said Paul Ramaloko, spokesman of the South Africa elite police unit, the Hawks.
“We had to take him through the X-ray and take them out from his body,” he told AFP.
South Africa is among the world’s top producers of diamonds.
