Pinay pleads guilty to heroin smuggling in HK
06/03/2009 | 07:54 PM
MANILA, Philippines - A 30-year-old Filipino woman pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in Hong Kong after she was accused of smuggling 206 grams of heroin there.
Radio dzBB reported early Tuesday a Hong Kong court is expected to render its judgment on the Filipino woman on July 20.
The woman was arrested at the Hong Kong International Airport after she entered Hong Kong from Malaysia using a tourist visa last August.
And while authorities failed to find drugs in her luggage, an abdominal X-ray showed she had 42 packs (206 grams) of heroin inside her body.
’Drug mules’
This case, however, is just one of the many ingenious – but dangerous – ways of smuggling prohibited substances.
The Philippine Embassy in Beijing said that one Filipino even died of poisoning upon arrival in Guangzhou from Vietnam on December 13, 2008, because the courier swallowed the drugs he was carrying to evade arrest.
But hiding the illegal drugs inside the body would be futile, said the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), as some airports abroad have installed special X-ray machines that could detect suspicious objects embedded even in a person’s body.
Growing trend
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said that in 2008 alone, 111 Filipinos – almost all of them women – were arrested for drug-related offenses in China, Hong Kong, and Macau.
This, the DFA said, was a 594-percent increase from the 16 arrested in 2007.
Of those arrested in 2007 and 2008, 22 are facing death sentence, 12 have gotten life terms, while 11 have been made to serve 15-16 years in prison.
All of the arrests stemmed from narcotic drugs being found in the suspects’ luggage supposedly given to them by people they met in a transit country – usually Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Laos, and Vietnam.
The Philippine Embassy in Beijing, meanwhile, also disclosed that as of March 11 this year, 16 Filipinos – four in Guangzhou, three in Xiamen, three in Shanghai, three in Hong Kong, and three in Macau – had been arrested as suspects in drug smuggling. - Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV
Radio dzBB reported early Tuesday a Hong Kong court is expected to render its judgment on the Filipino woman on July 20.
The woman was arrested at the Hong Kong International Airport after she entered Hong Kong from Malaysia using a tourist visa last August.
And while authorities failed to find drugs in her luggage, an abdominal X-ray showed she had 42 packs (206 grams) of heroin inside her body.
’Drug mules’
This case, however, is just one of the many ingenious – but dangerous – ways of smuggling prohibited substances.
The Philippine Embassy in Beijing said that one Filipino even died of poisoning upon arrival in Guangzhou from Vietnam on December 13, 2008, because the courier swallowed the drugs he was carrying to evade arrest.
But hiding the illegal drugs inside the body would be futile, said the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), as some airports abroad have installed special X-ray machines that could detect suspicious objects embedded even in a person’s body.
Growing trend
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said that in 2008 alone, 111 Filipinos – almost all of them women – were arrested for drug-related offenses in China, Hong Kong, and Macau.
This, the DFA said, was a 594-percent increase from the 16 arrested in 2007.
Of those arrested in 2007 and 2008, 22 are facing death sentence, 12 have gotten life terms, while 11 have been made to serve 15-16 years in prison.
All of the arrests stemmed from narcotic drugs being found in the suspects’ luggage supposedly given to them by people they met in a transit country – usually Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Laos, and Vietnam.
The Philippine Embassy in Beijing, meanwhile, also disclosed that as of March 11 this year, 16 Filipinos – four in Guangzhou, three in Xiamen, three in Shanghai, three in Hong Kong, and three in Macau – had been arrested as suspects in drug smuggling. - Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV
