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Thai Cops Seize 277
Lbs. of Heroin
By Busaba Sivasomboon The drugs were allegedly set to be smuggled by an ethnic Chinese trafficking ring to the United States, said Police Lt. Gen. Patpongpanit Komkrit, chief of the Thai Narcotic Suppression Bureau. After months of surveillance, police on Monday arrested two Thai-Chinese men who led them to the heroin hidden in two cars in the airport parking lot. The seizure was Thailand's biggest heroin haul in several years. The penalty for drug smuggling in Thailand is death. The investigation followed a request from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for help from Thai police. Police hope to make more arrests, particularly of one key suspect in Hong Kong, Komkrit said at a press conference. He said the narcotic was bought in northern Thailand, which along with Myanmar and Laos, makes up Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle, a leading source of the world's opium and its derivative heroin. Although Thailand has managed to almost eradicate cultivation of the opium poppy on its own mountainsides, it remains a conduit for drugs made in Myanmar, also known as Burma, the world's second largest opium producer after Afghanistan. |