Authorities Seek Interpol Help After Breaking Up Trafficking Ring

Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
11 September 2007

Cambodian police said Tuesday they had broken up a human trafficking ring in August, but three foreigners who were arrested have already been extradited and four ringleaders had eluded capture.

The international human smuggling racket would have moved more than 200 people from Pakistan and Sri Lanka through Cambodia en route to other countries, police said.

Police extradited two men, Thanga Veluram and Thanga Velusarawanachathes, to Sri Lanka and one man, Mohammed Nurula, to Pakistan, in September, following their arrest in late August, a human rights official said Tuesday.

Cambodia meanwhile hoped to enlist Interpol in its search for four leaders of the trafficking ring, police spokesman Maj. Gen. Chhay Sinarith said.

Cambodia was seeking two men from Sri Lanka and two from Pakistan in connection to the smuggling racket, he said.

Chhay Sinarith named the Sri Lankans as Mariam Pillai Lerin Ranni, who owned the Curry Leaf restaurant in Phnom Penh, and his brother, Lipton Lerin, and the Pakistanis as Muhhamad Nadim, who ran the Taj Mahal restaurant in Siem Reap, and a man known only as Gamini, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The two Sri Lankans named by AP were members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, a security expert in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday.

An Interpol spokeswoman said Tuesday the agency was seeking further information from its Cambodian office on whether an official request had been filed there.

In the 1990s, Cambodia was a major source of weapons for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, who fund their insurgency against the Sri Lankan government in part with profits from human trafficking.

Cambodia Seeks Interpol Help With Human Trafficking Suspects

2007-09-11
By SOPHENG CHEANG
AP

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA: Cambodia will ask Interpol to help track down four men wanted for allegedly planning to use the kingdom to smuggle people to third countries, a police official said Tuesday (11 Sept).

The men - two from Pakistan and two from Sri Lanka - used to live in Cambodia but left the country before police discovered their smuggling plan last month, Maj. Gen. Chhay Sinarith, the head of the police information department, said Tuesday.

"We will be sending our request to the Interpol this week seeking their cooperation in tracking down the four men," he said.

Lyon, France-based Interpol has 186 member countries and facilitates cross-border police cooperation.

Chhay Sinarith said the men were part of a network that had planned to arrange for 250 people from Pakistan and Sri Lanka to arrive this month in Cambodia, from where they would be smuggled to Australia and European countries.

"We would have had a lot of difficulties to deal with if we had not foiled the plan in time and had allowed them to smuggle people" through Cambodia, said Chhay Sinarith.

He identified one of the suspects as Mariam Pillai Lerin Ranni, a 44-year-old Sri Lankan national, who used to run the Curry Leaf restaurant in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

The restaurant was merely a front for trafficking activity, Chhay Sinarith said, adding that Ranni left Cambodia in August, apparently to avoid arrest.

Ranni's brother, Lipton Lerin, is also a suspect. The third suspect is Muhhamad Nadim, from Pakistan, who used to run the Taj Mahal restaurant in Cambodia's Siem Reap province, Chhay Sinarith said. He identified the fourth suspect only as Gamini, also Pakistani, but gave no further information about him.

Last week, Sok Kalyan, a Phnom Penh court prosecutor, issued a court summons to question the four men about their alleged smuggling plans, according to a copy of the summons obtained by The Associated Press.

In 2001, Cambodian police seized an Indonesian-registered boat off the country's southern coast carrying 248 Pakistanis and Afghans and a handful of Iraqis who had allegedly paid to be smuggled into Australia and New Zealand.