Customs had seized more than 2 tons of drugs and 52 million yuan (US$7.56 million) of drug money in the past three years, the General Administration of Customs said yesterday in Beijing.

They had uncovered 898 drug-smuggling cases since April 2005 and caught 1,330 suspects for drug trafficking.

Urumqi Customs in northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region had caught 13 suspects in 10 cases involving 80 kilograms of heroin since last June, the administration said.

Smugglers had been found using special equipment to put heroin into tiny plastic pipes which were then woven into carpets.

Fifty-three kilograms of heroin were found in three carpets being delivered from Afghanistan to Urumqi and 100 others imported from Pakistan by air to the Xinjiang capital city.

In Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, a Customs probe into a trans-border trafficking group culminated in December with the detention of 17 suspects and the seizure of 19.2 kilograms of drugs, 202 kilograms of drug ingredients, two pistols, 55 bullets and a knife.

Shenzhen Customs raided another group on April 23, confiscating 114.3 kilograms of ketamine, 3.1 million yuan of illicit money and six vehicles and rounding up 34 suspects.

In Shanghai yesterday, three men were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and a fourth was sentenced to life in prison for trafficking drugs.

Wang Qihai, a Fujian Province native born in the 1980s, was sentenced to death with a reprieve of two years.

The Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court heard Wang rented an apartment in Shanghai and ordered an accomplice to bring more than 1 kilogram of the methamphetamine ice from Fujian last September. But police caught the accomplice at a toll station on the highway.

(Shanghai Daily June 25, 2008)