A man was detained by Stung Treng provincial Military Police on Monday. Police
A man was detained by Stung Treng provincial Military Police on Monday in Leu Village in Stung Treng district’s Srah Russey commune, on grounds of trafficking nearly 1kg of methamphetamine pills.
National Military Police spokesman Eng Hy told The Post on Monday that the man was being detained in connection with drug trafficking, but that the case was still under investigation.
“I need to investigate the case further. Although I have received a report from the Stung Treng authorities, I cannot give you more details about it at the moment. If you would like more detailed information, you can speak to the Stung Treng provincial court prosecutor,” Hy said.
A Stung Treng Military Police officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Post on Monday that the suspect is a 38-year-old Cambodian national who resides in Srah Russey commune’s Leu village.
He said the bust happened at 11am on Monday near the bus station on Asian Street in Leu village.
The suspect had been trailed by Military Police for several months before his arrest, the source said.
He said the suspect was wearing a backpack and, when the Military Police inspected it, they found drugs packed inside yellow bags which had been placed inside another bag.
A report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned on March 11 that there has been a significant increase in methamphetamine production in Southeast Asia over the past year, leading to an oversupply of the drug in East and Southeast Asia.
The report, Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia: Trends and Patterns of Amphetamine-type Stimulants and New Psychoactive Substances, said there were more than 116 tonnes of confirmed methamphetamine seizures in the region last year.
This, it said, represented a 210 per cent increase compared to seizures in 2013. In 2017, the total seized was 82 tonnes.
The UNODC said in Cambodia, the market for methamphetamine, particularly in crystalline form, continues to expand.
Last year, Cambodian authorities arrested more than 16,000 people, equal to 44 people per day, and seized a total of 533kg of illegal drugs.
