Heroin carried by Thai air hostess traced to Myanmar

Police investigations into heroin carried by a flight attendant from a Thai airline have led to the assumption that the drugs were produced in Myanmar and smuggled into northern Thailand via Laos. The heroin smuggled by the 26-year-old flight attendant, Mina, was produced by a Myanmar drug gang and entered Thailand via Chin Khum district in Phayao province, northern Thailand, which borders Laos, according to Police Lieutenant General Suanboon Thiankhong, deputy chief of Thailand's Narcotics Suppression Bureau (NSB), on Sunday. Chin Khum district is a transit point for drugs and is under surveillance, and to circumvent strict inspections at the Thai border, drugs are being brought in via northern Laos instead of directly from Myanmar, he said. Recent raids in Chin Khum district that seized hundreds of millions of methamphetamine pills also support this fact, and from that area, drugs are primarily smuggled out to foreign countries after passing through Thailand. Uthai Khannaphiwat admitted to police that he delivered a parcel in the form of a handbag with an elephant pattern, in which drugs were hidden, to flight attendant Mina's condominium in the Bang Na district of Bangkok on June 22, and that he picked up the parcels from Chin Khum district on June 20. The man was arrested in Phitsanulok city last Friday and has confessed to police that he had carried out drug transportation in this manner more than three times previously. After flight attendant Mina was arrested at Melbourne Airport on June 25, the man immediately changed his phone and attempted to dispose of other drugs he had, leading police to suspect his testimony. He kept the parcels he brought from Phayao province at his apartment in Ayutthaya and hired a driver on June 22 to deliver the parcel to the flight attendant, going to a condominium in Bangkok. During a search of his apartment on Saturday, remnants of heroin were found in the handbags, while other bags were discarded by the roadside in Ayutthaya on Friday as evidence destruction after the flight attendant was arrested, said Police Lieutenant General Suanboon. Police Lieutenant General Thiradet Thamsuthi, deputy commander of the Bangkok Metropolitan Police, said on Sunday that bags discarded by the roadside, pointed out by the suspect and his friend, were recovered.