Lao drug traffickers arrested near border with Vietnam

Three Lao nationals were caught red-handed trafficking 10 bricks of heroin, 31,000 meth pills, 2 kg of opium and four guns near the shared border with Vietnam on June 11.
Dien Bien (VNA) – Three Lao nationals werecaught red-handed trafficking 10 bricks of heroin, 31,000 meth pills, 2 kg ofopium and four guns near the shared border with Vietnam on June 11.

The three men were found trading drugs in a village in Maydistrict, the Lao province of Phongsaly, which shares the border with Vietnam’snorthern mountainous province of Dien Bien during a joint operation between thetwo provinces’ armed forces. They are alleged to be drug wholesalers and havetransported drugs from Laos to Vietnam.

The suspects and objects of evidence were handed over to theLao side for further investigation.

Police in Dien Bien arrested three peopletrafficking 135 bricks of heroin and 500,000 meth pills in March. This was thelarge drugs trafficking case with the largest quantity of synthetic drug pillsseized in Vietnam so far.

Earlier on January 3 this year, the provincial Drug Crime Investigation Officecaptured two persons transporting 489 bricks of heroin weighing 171kg and worth3 million USD, the biggest-ever drug case detected in the country.

Drug-trafficking remains a major issue in Vietnam, especially at border areas,including Dien Bien, which is bordered by Pu’er city in China’s southern Yunnanprovince to the northwest and Laos’ Phongsaly province to the west.

Nearly 21,471 drug-trafficking cases were reported in 2017, up14.5 percent from 2016, according to a report on collaboration amongthe Police General Department, the General Department of Vietnam Customs,Vietnam Border Guard High Command and Vietnam Coast Guard.

Some 32,950 suspects were detained, a 13.6 percent increase over2016’s figure.

Statistics from the Vietnam Border Guard showed that the amountof synthetic drugs and marijuana seized in 2017 through the border ofVietnam and Laos respectively increased seven times and twice compared with2016.-VNA
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