The Judiciary Police (PJ) last week busted two more drug-smuggling cases using Macau as a transit point, in which PJ officers separately arrested two men from Uganda in East Africa and Suriname in northern South America at the local airport who had each swallowed 100 pellets of cocaine with an estimated street value totalling about 8.35 million patacas before flying to Macau, PJ spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said at a special press conference yesterday.
The total cocaine seized from the two suspects weighed 2,531 grammes, according to Lei.
Lei said that the Judiciary Police intercepted the two suspects, aged 35 and 40 and surnamed Odongo and Merkus respectively, upon their arrival in Macau on Wednesday and Thursday from Malaysia and Manila, respectively. Lei added that as a number of “goose egg-like objects” were discovered in each of the suspects’ belly through X-ray, they were then separately taken to the public Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre, where Odongo and Merkus excreted 100 and 84 cocaine-filled pellets, respectively.
According to Lei, PJ officers additionally found 16 cocaine-filled pellets in Merkus’s underpants.
Under questioning, Odongo insisted that did not know that the 100 pellets he had received from a gang member in Ethiopia on November 25 contained drugs, while Merkus admitted that he had swallowed 100 pellets of cocaine on November 23 before he arrived in Macau via America, Europe, the Middle East, and Manila in the Philippines.
Lei quoted Merkus as saying that he excreted 16 pellets of the drugs in Manila and hid them in his underpants.
Both told the police that they had been respectively promised a payment of US$3,200 and US$2,300 to smuggle the drugs.
The duo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, where they face drug-trafficking charges, according to Lei.
The two hooded drug mules from Uganda in East Africa (left) and Suriname in northern South America are separately escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers to a police vehicle outside the PJ headquarters after yesterday’s special press conference. – Photo combo: Yuki Lei
