(IDEX Online) - Child miners are using homing pigeons to smuggle diamonds from the mines where they work, claims a new book.They risk having their fingers broken, or worse, says US-based author Matthew Gavin Frank in Flight Of The Diamond Smugglers, a harrowing account of poverty and desperation on the west coast of Namibia and South Africa.He tells in great detail how a 13-year-old boy hides a pigeon in his lunchbox. He spends the day filling sacks with dirt, to be raised to the surface and sifted for gems.But Msizi (not his real name) stashes any diamonds he spots in his mouth, transfers them to four small bags fastened to his homing pigeon, and releases the bird at the bottom of the shaft, in the hop it will reach the shack where he lives without being shot.He can expect to sell them to organised crime gangs around Oranjemund, Namibia, for no more than $0.20 per carat. He's had the little finger on his left hand snapped by a guard in the past because he was suspected of smuggling, and knows that he risks having other digitd cut off if he's caught red-handed.Frank researched his book in Die Sperrgebiet (the Forbidden Zone), which was owned by the De Beers conglomerate and was closed off to the public until recently.Pic shows author Frank and his book