Thai immigration police nab French drug trafficker

NONG KHAI, THAILAND, March 3 (TNA) - Thai immigration police have arrested a French man who was attempting to smuggle 300 kilogrammes of cocaine from Thailand to neighbouring Lao PDR. Thai Immigration Police Chief Police Lieutenant General Panu Kerdlappol announced the arrest of the 33-year-old French citizen, Avelino de Jusus, on Monday, saying that the French man was nabbed, with the 300 kilogramme-cocaine also seized, by the Nong Khai immigration police on Sunday night, when he was at the Thai immigration checkpoint set up on the First Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, apparently to try to escape across the border into Lao PDR. The arrest came after the French Attache for Police Liaison in Thailand, Eric Francelet, asked for the cooperation from the Thai Police Immigration Bureau, as the suspect is under an arrest warrant approved by a court in Paris on charge of alleged drug trafficking. According to the French Embassy to Thailand, the French suspect had worked with his 14 other partners to engage in transnational trafficking of a total of 305 kilogrammes cocaine over the past two years, from Suriname and Ivory Coast into France. The Thai immigration police said, after finding out earlier that his partners were arrested by the French police, he then escaped from France to China, where he stayed for a month before traveling to Thailand on November 6, 2013. During his run, the suspect contacted his family in France and acknowledged his arrest warrant; so, he tried to escape into Lao PDR, where there has been no extradition treaty with France, but he was captured before crossing the border. (TNA)