C
Cao Pi
Guest
Monday October 18, 2010
Immigration Dept foils human smuggling bid
By MOHD FARHAAN SHAH
[email protected]
KOTA TINGGI: Four human traffickers tried to hoodwink the authorities by using Immigration Department stickers on their vehicles. But their effort to smuggle in 87 foreigners on a bus and van came to naught when they were stopped by the department’s enforcement unit at Air Tawar Lima here following a tip-off.
Forty-seven foreign men and 40 foreign women were detained along with the four Malaysians. Johor deputy state Immigration director Hamzani Abdul Jalil said the department had not ruled out the possibility that the Malaysians were agents of a human smuggling syndicate. He said the department was still trying to determine if the stickers used on the vehicles were authentic or fakes.
“We believe that the suspects used the stickers to deceive the authorities,” he said, adding that all those detained were between 20 and 60 years old. Hamzani said the illegal immigrants, who were from Batam, had used a laluan tikusor jungle route at Tanjung Pengelih in Pengerang to make their way inland.
