China, United States Police Crackdown On Transnational Gun Smuggling

By Ng Che Yean BEIJING (China), June 13 (Bernama) -- Police from China and the United States have jointly cracked down a major transnational gun-smuggling case, and arrested 23 suspects in China and another three in the US respectively, China's Ministry of Public Security said. A total of 105 guns, some 50,000 bullets and a large amount of gun parts were seized during the joint crackdown conducted by police of both countries, the ministry said in a statement on its official website. A staff sergeant of the US National Guard Special Forces in North Carolina, Joseph Debose, also the suspected kingpin of the case, was arrested for suspected illegal firearms trafficking on May 20, the statement said. The Chinese authorities initiated the investigation on Aug 25, 2011 when customs officers in Shanghai Pudong Airport found guns and gun parts in a delivery package claiming to be amplifiers. Wang Ting, 32, from Taizhou was detained in this case. Using information provided by Wang, Chinese police conducted a joint investigation with US Immigration and the Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations to track the criminal gang with members in China and the US, and successfully solved the transnational crime. Lin Zhifu, 25, a Chinese who has been living in the United States since November 2009, allegedly organised a group to store and smuggle firearms via the internet. They mailed the firearms by UPS Express to middle men like Wang, who would then sell the guns and parts to buyers in China, according to the statement. Despite the major part of the gun smuggling chain being domestically based, the ministry said the crackdown was difficult to solve as the source of the firearms was overseas. "Gun smugglers are using the internet to keep in touch with each other, and the information of suspects is fake. All this has made the case very difficult to solve," the statement said. The ministry also called for strengthened international law enforcement cooperation in cracking down on transnational crimes including gun-trafficking to ensure citizens' safety. -- BERNAMA