A Vietnamese national arrested in an undercover sting in Phnom Penh’s Chbar Ampov district last December was tried at the municipal court yesterday on drug charges.

Presiding judge Kim Roth Narin said that defendant Bouy Thin Tay, 50, had been charged by the prosecutor with “drug trafficking” under Article 40 of the Anti-Drug Law.

Colonel Kim San, chief of the anti-drug police unit at the Ministry of Interior, said that the suspect had been an active distributor of drugs in the city, and had been followed and investigated by undercover operatives for three months before his arrest.

“He was arrested at his rental house after he has sold six packages of drug powder to our undercover policeman, who had posed as a drug buyer and was buying drugs from him,” San said.

The six packages contained almost 14 grams of heroin and about 3.5 grams of methamphetamines, he added.

During his trial yesterday, Bouy Thin Tay denied the accusations, saying he was only a drug user, not a dealer.

A verdict is due to be handed down on July 15.