KOTA KINABALU: A human smuggling attempt into Sandakan has been foiled by marine police detecting suspicious behaviour by several vessels.
Marine police were patrolling waters near Berhala Island when they noticed a tug boat with two speedboats at around 2.30am on Thursday (Feb 6).
Sabah Marine police commander, Asst Comm Mohd Nazri Ibrahim said patrollers then sped towards them to investigate.
“Our personnel caught the skippers of the speedboats transferring illegal immigrants from the tug boat into the speedboats,” he said.
He said the immigrants comprising seven women and three males including a child, all Filipinos, were unable to produce any documents upon inspection.
“We have reasons to believe that these people aged between two and 64 years old were smuggled here,” said ACP Nazri in a statement.
The skippers and all 10 passengers were arrested while the vessels were seized, he said, adding all the people and boats were brought back to the Sandakan Marine operations base for further investigations and actions.
The confiscated items were valued at around RM219,500, he said.
This case is being probed under the Anti-Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Act, 2022, and the Immigration Act 1959/63.
