17 Year Old Chiangrai Teen Caught at Airport with Drugs

A 17-year-old hill-tribe youth was arrested with 30,370 Methamphetamine  tablets in two bags while attempting to board a plane from Chiang Rai Airport to Bangkok yesterday morning.

Customs officials became suspicious while X-raying the young man’s luggage, and asked him to open the bags and found drugs inside. The man reportedly confessed to taking the drugs from Mae Fa Luang district near the Thai-Myanmar border for delivery in Bangkok. He said he had done it once before, taking 10,000 tablets to Bangkok via bus for an Bt80, 000 payment.

In related news, four border-patrol policemen were injured when a group of five drug suspects threw a grenade at them in attempt to flee from a sting operation at 4.30am yesterday in Mukdahan’s Don Tan district. The suspects fled across the Mekong River, but officials managed to seize 1,878 yaba tablets, a pistol and a cell phone.

Ratchada-pisek Criminal Court yesterday sentenced Zambian man Jimmi Phiri, 32, to life imprisonment for attempting to smuggle 847 grams of crystal methamphetamine encased in 49 cubes, which he had swallowed, via Suvarnabhumi Airport last July. He was trying to deliver the drug to Malaysia for a payment of US$3,000 (Bt90,000). The court initially sentenced him to death but reduced the sentence due to his confession.