The Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court in south China's
Guangdong Province opened a public trial yesterday into the
country's largest-ever drug case involving methamphetamine, which
is more commonly known as 'ice.'
The case includes 10 suspects, including a permanent Hong Kong
resident.
They are charged with having manufactured more than 12.36 tons
of pure ice between January and October of 1999.
Zhang Shaoxian is the only woman defendant in the case.
The defendants are charged with illegally producing and
trafficking the drug on the Chinese mainland, an official from the
Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court said yesterday.
The public trial will last for at least two days, the unnamed
official said.
Produced by chemical synthesis over a period of 10 months, the
ice seized is almost equal in quantity to the total amount of ice
seized worldwide in 1998.
The ice, which the gang produced in an agricultural chemical
factory in Yinchuan, in northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region,
was seized by Guangdong police after it had been transported to the
province for sale, which shares borders with Hong Kong and Macao
special administrative regions.
A total of 11.08 tons of the drug was seized in a warehouse in
Guangzhou on November 4, 1999, while another 1.28 tons were seized
in Puning, a city in eastern Guangdong, fourteen days later.
It is the biggest ice case to be handled in the Chinese courts
since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the
official said.
Investigations revealed that the ice was transported to
Guangdong in eight trucks after manufacture in Yinchuan.
Zhang Qisheng, the prime suspect of the drug gang, escaped to
Thailand using a counterfeit Chinese passport under the name Zhang
Zhongheng, and other gang members fled to various parts of the
Chinese mainland.
Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Security immediately
established a task force to handle the case and sought both
international and domestic cooperation to help in tracking down the
suspects.
Zhang was arrested by Thailand police in October of 2000. He was
sentenced to one year plus six months in jail in Thailand for using
a fake passport to enter the country.
With the help of Interpol China, Zhang was extradited to China
in June 2002, after completion of his jail term in Thailand.
By January of this year, the other nine suspects were also
arrested by Chinese police.
According to Chinese law, the maximum penalty for drug producers
and traffickers is death.
(China Daily November 28, 2003)