Seven foreigners, 3 Taiwanese indicted for cannabis smuggling

Kaohsiung, April 17 (CNA) Ten people have been indicted for allegedly smuggling cannibis into Taiwan and are now being detained, according to the Ciaotou District Prosecutors Office on Wednesday.

In a statement, the office said the 10 were indicted for smuggling drugs off the coast of southwestern Taiwan in December 2023 and have been detained with the approval of a local court.

According to the statement, Ciaotou prosecutors said they had been investigating and monitoring suspicious activities for three months before directing the Coast Guard to board a Tainan-registered commercial raft in waters off the northwestern coast of Kaohsiung on Dec. 10, 2023.

Coast Guard officers found and seized four packages of cannibis weighing 221.7 kilograms on the raft. The next day, unoccupied lifeboats with tow ropes were found floating in the same waters carrying 20 similar bags of cannibis weighing 1,159.3 kg, the statement said.

Prosecutors then determined that a foreign oil tanker in waters to the southwest was the mother ship for the drug trafficking activities and dispatched the Coast Guard to intercept, board, inspect, and investigate it.

Three Taiwanese and seven Burmese crew were taken into custody on suspicion of drug trafficking.

Prosecutors concluded that the suspects carried cannibis to waters off Taiwan's southwestern coast and waited for instructions to throw the packs of cannibis overboard.

They then salvaged the packages with connected rafts to smuggle the drugs into Taiwan, the statement said.

The market value of the seized cannibis was over NT$3.5 billion (US$108 million), the statement said.