Cambodian police nab 20,000 methamphetamine tablets

Drug seized and 2 suspects arrested (Photo: Koh Santepheap newspaper)

Mon, 21 Jan 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - A police operation in the Cambodian capital nabbed 20,000 methamphetamine tablets, or more than 2 kilos of the drug, local media reported Monday. Khmer-language newspaper Koh Santepheap quoted deputy Phnom Penh police chief Reach Sokhon as saying the accused drug courier, Nai Thai, 33, had confessed to possession and implicated a second woman, Put Nailhy, 48, as the owner of the drugs.

The paper quoted Sokhon as saying the bust, one of the largest to date of the highly addictive drug, took two months to carry out.

Cambodia has a massive problem with the cheap and addictive drug, nicknamed ya ba, which enables people to work long hours, and police are now battling local producers as well as imports from neighbouring nations.

Source of Methamphetamine drug seized in Bangkok points to Cambodia?

Police arrest female drug trafficker

TNA (Thailand)

Police here have arrested a female drug trafficker and seized 160,000 methamphetamine pills and 145 grammes of so-called 'ice' crystal methamphetamine valued at nearly 50 million baht from her apartment, police said.

Bangkok police chief Pol. Lt-Gen. Adisorn Nonsi told a press conference that plainclothes policemen had contacted 35-year-old Varisra Larpcharoen to buy 30 grammes of crystal methamphetamine hydrochloride, the drug also known popularly as 'ice'.

She was apprehended after meeting the plainclothes police officers at a parking lot of a shopping mall.

Police later took Miss Varisra to her apartment on the outskirts of Bangkok and found quantities of speed pills hidden in boxes and ice in a wardrobe. The seized drugs were estimated at being worth nearly 50 million baht on the street.

Miss Varisra reportedly told police that she received the methamphetamine, commonly called yaa baa, from a man identified only as 'Mr. O' but she had never met him because the drug would be sent to her by his agent. She said she bought the drug from another agent at the Thai-Cambodian border district of Aranyaprathet.

Gen Adisorn said the woman had been selling drugs in Bangkok's slum areas since 1996 and not for only two years as she had claimed, but that she had moved on after her former accomplices were killed or arrested.

Miss Varisra is charged with possession of illegal drugs and trafficking. In the meantime, the police said they were looking for the otherwise unidentified dealer known as 'Mr. O'.

Thaksin's crackdown on drug trade in Thailand shifted drug traffic route to Laos and Cambodia

Thailand looks back in anger on war on drugs

Aug 29, 2007
By Peter Janssen
DPA

Bangkok - In 2003 Thailand's former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched his War on Drugs, a police-led campaign to staunch a flood of methamphetamine pills made in illicit labs along the Thai-Myanmar border into the kingdom.

The three-month-long war claimed 2,500 victims of extra-judicial slayings, supposedly drug traffickers, and immediately placed Thailand in the international dog house for gross human rights violations.

Thaksin, deposed by a coup on September 19 may still go to court for masterminding the slayings. A special commission has been set up to determine his culpability, with results expected within 10 months.

'There are at least 80 cases that have been thoroughly reviewed in which it's been proven that the victims had nothing to do with drugs,' said Kraisak Choonhavan, a member of the commission. 'There was a huge injustice done to Thailand in the name of the war on drugs.'

Worse still, it didn't even solve Thailand's methamphetamine problem.

Methamphetamines, also called yaa baa, or crazy drugs, were made illegal in Thailand in 1996, about the same time that crime syndicates operating the heroin trade out of northern Myanmar started switching to synthetic stimulants.

Thailand, Myanmar's neighbour to the south, became the chief market and transit route for the new drugs.

In 2000, Thai authorities estimated the methamphetamine production in the Shan State of Myanmar, at 1 billion pills, based on the 100 million seized in Thailand.

Thaksin, a populist politician elected prime minister in 2001, decided heavy-handedness was the best solution to the problem.

The mass slayings of suspected methamphetamine pushers did reduce abuse, for a while, but it hardly eliminated demand for drugs among Thai youths, the main market for the stimulants.

The crackdown also gave rise to a surge in abuse among Thailand's neighbours, Laos and Cambodia.

'The traffic route essentially shifted away from Thailand into Laos and down the Mekong River in Cambodia,' said Jeremy Douglas, the Bangkok-based regional project coordinator for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 'So you see this huge surge in abuse in those two countries, simultaneous with the war on drugs.'

Methamphetamines are now readily available again in Thailand, with many of the pills being imported across the border from Laos and Cambodia, according to drug authorities.

But the damage done by the war on drugs to Thailand's reputation abroad and to Thai society remains.

Since Thailand made methamphetamine use illegal in 1996, the number of young people imprisoned has doubled. Last year, for example, some 51,457 Thais were arrested on amphetamine-related charges, or 75 per cent of total drug arrests made.

Prior to 1996, methamphetamines were available legally as a stimulant popular among truck drivers and students cramming for exams.

'If you look at it from a societal public health point of view it's a complete disaster,' said one foreign expert who has been studying the impact of the crackdown on methamphetamines in northern Thailand. 'It's a catastrophe because you have all these young people going into prison where they will be exposed to high-risk behaviour like tattooing, rape and whatever,' said the foreign health worker, who asked to remain anonymous.

A good place to check out the societal impact of Thaksin's war is Klong Toey slum in Bangkok, once the reputed hub for the capital's booming methamphetamine trade.

At least 10 alleged methamphetamine dealers in Klong Toey were killed during the war, but Father Joe Maier, a Catholic priest who has been running the Mercy Centre in the slum for 37 years, opined that only four of the victims were genuine drug dealers.

'The sin here was heavy-handedness,' said Maier. 'And secondly, no one really wanted to stop the drugs because everyone knows that if you want to stop drugs you have to have pride in the community.'

'There was no money put in to better schools, better drug rehabilitation programmes and that sort of stuff. That's my anger,' said Maier.

Two Cambodian drug mules nabbed in Thailand for transporting Meth pills in shoes

Million Baht Shoes; Nab Two Khmers With 1,000,000 Baht Of Yah Bah in Sandals

August 14, 2007
Pattaya Daily News (Thailand)

Pattaya investigators arrested two Khmers, who had more than 6,000 Yah bah (amphetamine) tablets in their sandals to sell to customers in Pattaya. The illicit drugs were probably valued at more than one million baht

On 13 August 2007, at 4:30 PM, Police Colonel Suthin Sabphueng, Pattaya Superintendent and Police Major Chaigrit Thong-Inn, an investigator and a team of police officers arrested a yah bah dealer. Further investigation resulted in the information that the dealers bought the yah bah from a big agency which delivered the drugs to Pattaya.

Police forced the dealer to order 300,000 baht worth of yah bah to be delivered to Pattaya. The appointed place for the yah bah delivery was in the vicinity of the pedestrian crossing bridge on Sukhumvit Rd., in front of Soi Bhothisarn, opposite Wat Nongyai, Banglamung, Chonburi. The police team staked out the area and waited for the drug couriers.

At the appointed time, the police spotted two suspects, who came by bus, on the Chonburi-Rayong route. They immediately arrested the two suspects, who were identified as Mr. Jae Wern (24) and Mr. La Jen (18). Both were Khmers. Police could not find anything on their bodies. However, the police were suspicious of the unusual thickness of their sandals. When they opened the bottoms of the sandals, the police found six bags of yah bah, totaling 6400 tablets. The bags were very well packed to prevent crushing.

Jae Wern and La Jen confessed that they were hired for 2,000 baht by a Thai and Khmer agency from Prajeenburi Province to deliver yah bah to customers in Pattaya. The agency modified their shoes to hide the yah bah so they could deliver it to customers, undetected by the authorities. They took the bus from Kabinburi and connected to the Chonburi-Rayong bus to make the delivery.

Police Major Chaigrit Thong-Inn said that, earlier, they had arrested Mr. Ake, a teenager in Pattaya, for drug dealing. He was caught with thirty yah bah tablets. They extended the investigation by having Mr. Ake order yah bah to be delivered to Soi Bhothisarn so they could nab the two Khmers who were the drug couriers. The drugs were ordered from Cambodia by Thai and Khmer Agency who were big-time drug dealers. The drugs were distributed to smaller dealers on a regular basis. The drugs seized, in this operation, were worth more than one million baht. Police will further interrogate Mr. Jae Wern and Mr. La Jen to widen the investigation and arrest more drug dealers, as well.