Image from Vietnam News/ANN.
HANOI, June 20 (dpa): Vietnamese police have seized 270 kilogrammes of ketamine - including 90 kilogrammes stored in pig organs - from a Taiwanese drug-trafficking ring, the state media has announced.
After intercepting gang members transporting ketamine in instant noodle packages in May, police used testimonies from these arrests to locate a factory used by the Taiwanese traffickers.
Security officials then raided a warehouse in Ho Chi Minh City, where they found 150 kilogrammes of ketamine hidden inside electric motors, along with 90 kilograms stashed inside the organs of 900 pigs awaiting delivery to China, local newspaper Tuoi Tre reported.
Police then tracked the drugs and caught the traffickers in the act as they attempted to bring the narcotics to Hanoi.
Vietnamese drug traders in Cambodia reportedly colluded with a syndicate in Vietnam before transporting drugs across the border and shipping them out of Ho Chi Minh City.
The southern metropolis has emerged as a major transport hub for the cross-border illegal drug trade in recent years, heightened in part by Vietnam's proximity to the Golden Triangle region covering Myanmar, Laos and Thailand
Under Vietnamese law, the production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or cocaine, or 300 grams of methamphetamines, warrants the death penalty.
On October 8, 2019, Vietnamese courts sentence 11 people to death for drug trafficking in a single day. - dpa
