Vietnam busts huge drug trafficking ring-media
HANOI - Vietnamese authorities have
smashed the country's biggest drug trafficking ring, which
allegedly comprised a network of 120 people across 14
provinces, official media reported on Thursday.
The Saigon Giai Phong (Saigon Liberation) daily quoted police
as saying the ring, which included Vietnamese security officials
and government employees, had smuggled in hundreds of
kilograms of heroin since the early 1990s.
More than 30 people were arrested recently, and prosecutors
were compiling dossiers for a trial scheduled to begin at the end
of December, possibly in Hanoi, it added.
An official at the People's Supreme Prosecution Institute in
Hanoi confirmed the number of arrests, but declined to give
details.
Testimony from one of those arrested showed that since 1994
one courier alone had smuggled in 778 packs of heroin weighing
a 272.3 kg (600 lb) and more than one tonne of opium, the daily
said.
Heroin is derived from opium.
It was unclear whether more arrests would be made, where the
drugs came from and how much was seized. The newspaper did
not say if the drugs were for use in Vietnam or give th street
value of the heroin.
The case broke when police found two packs of heroin hidden
in an eight-year-old child's backpack in the northern city of Nam
Dinh, the newspaper said.
Trafficking as little as 100 grams (3.3 ounces) of heroin is
punishable in communist Vietnam by death or life imprisonment.
Vietnam has been identified by anti-drug agencies as an
important post in the heroin trafficking route from the Golden
Triangle region centred on Myanmar, Laos and parts of
southwestern China and northern Thailand.
The country also has its own heroin addiction problem. Last
year, courts sentenced 49 people to death and arrested 18,000
for drug-related crimes, official media have reported.
Reuters - November 11, 1999.
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