Police hunt drug bosses [-6 of them are Vietnamese]

Police seize drums of safrole oil, which is used to produce the drug ecstasy, during a raid in Phnom Penh on Wednesday. (Photo Supplied)

Friday, 04 May 2012
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
The Phnom Penh Post

Cambodian police are pursuing two leaders of a drug ring after arresting 11 people and seizing more than 3,000 litres of safrole oil on Tuesday and Wednesday, Brigadier General Pen Rath, deputy chief of Phnom Penh municipal police, said yesterday.

Authorities believe the two alleged ringleaders, both Vietnamese nationals, are attempting to flee Cambodia, prompting police to alert Vietnamese, Thai and Lao law enforcement officials to the suspects’ flight.

“They are now escaping from Cambodia to Vietnam,” Pen Rath said. “To arrest them, our Cambodian police have been informing all neighbouring countries to cooperated and intervene . . . especially Vietnamese and Lao authorities.”

Six raids net huge drug haul

Safrole oil is used in the production of ecstasy pills, like these, which were seized in a raid on a laboratory in New York. (Reuters)

Thursday, 03 May 2012
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
The Phnom Penh Post

Eleven people were arrested and more than 3,000 litres of safrole oil – enough to manufacture 30 million tablets of ecstasy – were seized on Tuesday and yesterday during raids on six drug-producing sites in the capital, police said.

The raids, the product of a months-long investigation, were led by Brigadier General Touch Naruth, chief of Phnom Penh Municipal Police, and Chiv Keng, president of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, along with related district governors and officials of the four city districts where the raids occurred.

“I think that this is a big operation for cracking down on drugs,” said Pen Rath, deputy chief of the Phnom Penh Municipal Police. “This is another success, and we have arrested many drug dealers, cracked down on many drug-producing sites, and seized a lot of safrole in the city.”

According to Pen Rath, investigators found that the confiscated safrole was imported by drug dealers across the porous Cambodian-Thai border.

Ecstasy factories destroyed in Cambodian rainforests

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 20, 2009 (Xinhua) -- Ten ecstasy laboratories operated by local drug cartels were destroyed Wednesday in one of Cambodia's most impenetrable and remote jungle areas in the country's southwest Cardamom Mountains, according to a statement released Friday by Wildlife Alliance.

The raid was carried out by an anti-drug task force led by Wildlife Alliance and in close cooperation with forest rangers from Cambodia's armed services and Ministry of Environment.

"At least 35 tons of safrole oil, a main ingredient used in the methamphetamine production of ecstasy, could have been used to make over five million ecstasy pills with a street value of over 100 million U.S. dollars," according to local officials.

Wildlife Alliance-sponsored ranger team from Cambodia's Ministry of Environment and managed by Fauna and Flora International, came across the ecstasy labs several months ago during a routine foot patrol through Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, 200 miles northwest of Phnom Penh.

Wildlife Alliance Technical Advisor and former French Legionnaire, Eduard Lefter, who planned the complex and dangerous raid with Cambodian Forest Rangers, commented on the operation, saying "The mission was very difficult to organize and the conditions extremely tough. The mountain terrain and dense forest made a helicopter insertion virtually impossible, so we went in by foot."

According to Lefter, the team spent 12 days in the jungle battling leeches and the resulting wound infections, as well as skirting landmines which made forward progress extremely difficult. By the end of the mission much of Lefter's ranger teams were suffering from dehydration from dwindling water supplies.

The teams also carried explosive ordnance in the form of landmines, provided by the Cambodian Military, to destroy the ecstasy labs and safrole distillation equipment.

Cambodia to end trade in key ecstasy ingredient [-M'reah Prov oil to be banned]

PHNOM PENH, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia is seeking ways to include the illicit trade in oil from the rare M'reah Prov tree into its anti-drug legislation, local media reported Thursday.

"Introducing legislation is crucial to stopping all forms of trade in M'reah Prov oil and would enable us to impose heavy punishments on traffickers," Lou Ramin, general secretary of the National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD), was quoted by the Mekong Times as saying.

He said that Vietnam has reported many hundreds of tons of the oil being smuggled into its country from 2003 to 2006, while Thailand reported that it seized 50 tons of M'reah Prov oil smuggled from Cambodia in 2007.

The Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture's forestry administration said that the country's M'reah Prov trees are mostly found in the provinces of Pursat, Battambang and Koh Kong.

Wong Hoy Yuen, a project coordinator from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said that M'reah Prov oil is up to 90 percent rich in Safrole oil, which is used as the main precursor in the clandestine manufacture of MDMA, a drug popularly known as "ecstasy".

M'reah Prov resin is often illegally tapped from trees in Cambodia's densely forested northwestern regions, the newspaper said.

The species is seriously under threat because the slow-growing trees are cut down so the stump and roots of the trees can be boiled to extract the oil, it added.