11 Year-old Used In Drug Smuggling Operations

[george]

11 year-old used in drug smuggling operations

MAE SAI: -- Police in Thailand's northern border district of Mae Sai in Chiang Rai Province yesterday arrested an 11 year-old girl from Myanmar who had been used by drug traffickers to get methamphetamine tablets across the border.

Mae Sai police, who pointed to a growing trend among drug smugglers to use children, said that the girl had been sent to a juvenile detention centre.

The girl was captured during a sting operation in which plain clothed police officers posed as customers.

In a separate operation in Mae Sai, police also arrested a 20 year-old woman named as Miss Buariew Inhong, together with two other 20 year-old men, as they were transporting 400 methamphetamine tablets hidden in their motorcycle helmets.

The suspects said that they had been hired for Bt5,000 by a Mae Sai resident, Mrs. Pachariya Maitang, who later confessed that she had purchased the drugs in Myanmar and intended to sell them to young people living in her village.

The arrests come as the government is engaged in the third phase of its war on drugs, and local officials have warned that large quantities of methamphetamine tablets are being stashed along the Thai-Myanmar border

--TNA 2005-06-09