R
Red 5
Guest
Published: Monday November 1, 2010 MYT 12:53:00 PM
Trio arrested over heroin shipped from Malaysia
MELBOURNE: A woman and her son have been charged with organising one of Australia's biggest heroin smuggling attempts. The 55-year-old woman and her 28-year-old son, both from Campsie in southwest Sydney, were arrested on Saturday night after federal police seized 168kg of heroin in a shipping container sent from Malaysia to Sydney, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reports.
A 33-year-old Hong Kong national was also arrested. The woman is due to appear at Sydney's Central Local Court. Australian Federal Police Commander David Stewart said the heroin was found in bags in a container of wooden doors on Oct 21. "A seizure of this magnitude is significant," AAP quotes Stewart as telling reporters. "A large one has not been found of this nature since 2002.
"This importation is the fifth largest in Australian history, and (the interception) has saved the community A$48.7mil (RM149mil) in associated health and social costs," he said. The heroin was worth A$58.8mil (RM180mil) in its current form, but once it had been cut it would be worth upwards of A$410mil (RM1.25bil) on the street, Stewart said.
Customs and Border Protection officers X-rayed 295 doors and found 24 packages of white powder inside each of nine doors and 14 packages in another door, a total of 230 packages. "The doors were manufactured to look like domestic internal doors," Stewart said. "They were of pretty poor construction plywood was screwed on top of the doors and inside there were foil blocks.
"Once you unscrewed the ply from the doors it was very plain to see the blocks in full view. Customs detected them with relative ease." Police did not release details of the exact charges against the three accused. Police said later that all three had been charged with attempting to possess a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug. The maximum penalty for this offence is life imprisonment. - Bernama
