Four African travelers suspected of trafficking heroin have been
arrested in Shenzhen, a city in south China's Guangdong
Province.
They will be indicted by Chinese procurators according to
Chinese law, said sources with the Shenzhen Customs.
The first case came to light on December 3 when a traveler with
a Liberian passport attempted to enter Chinese territory at
Shenzhen Airport.
He was stopped by customs clearance officers at the airport. A
scan showed that a number of round objects were hidden in his
abdomen. They turned out to be high-purity heroin weighing one
kilogram.
The other three cases occurred at the land checkpoint between
Hong Kong and Luohu on December 12 and 13.
In the afternoon of December 12, a middle-aged man holding a
Kenyan passport aroused suspicion and was stopped by customs
clearance staff. He had also hidden high-purity heroin in his
abdomen. He confessed during interrogation that he had been ordered
to deliver the drug to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong.
The customs clearance officers also found and confiscated
540-grams of high-purity heroin wrapped in plastic film and hidden
in socks worn by a man from Ghana, and another 795-grams of heroin
hidden inside the body of a woman with a Guinean passport the
following day.
The Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates
that penalties for heroin traffickers range from 15 years in prison
to a life sentence or even execution, plus confiscation of
property.
(Xinhua News Agency December 26, 2006)
