Crime
Brazilian Woman Arrested at Bangkok Airport With 60 Balloons of Cocaine in Her Stomach
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BANGKOK – A 35 year-old Brazilian woman was arrested at Suvarnabhumi airport after an X-ray found 60 packets of cocaine inside her stomach on Wednesday.
Jozezelly Mendes Wanzeler, 35, a Brazilian national, was taken for interrogation by customs officials and drug suppression officers on suspicion of smuggling. The tourist was later asked to undergo an airport X-ray scan, which revealed numerous round objects in her stomach.
The arrest came after drug suppression officers based at the airport received a tip-off that a Brazilian woman boarding Ethiopia Airlines Flight ET628 to Thailand had swallowed illicit drugs. The officers asked customs and airport officials to help monitor the arrivals, and they later spotted the woman walking in the passenger terminal. She was acting suspiciously, they said.
Authorities had yet to give details about the quantity of cocaine found in her stomach.
Meanwhile, Senior Yakuza gang member Shigeharu Shirai will be deported to Japan on Thursday following his detention at the Immigration Bureau, a senior police officer said on Wednesday.
Deputy Royal Thai Police chief Pol Gen Wirachai Songmetta said Mr Shirai will be released from the bureau prison and placed on a flight to Japan on Thursday, the Bangkok Post reported.
The member of the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza gang is serving a jail term for overstaying in Thailand and entering the country illegally.
The 72-year-old was arrested in Lop Buri on Jan 10 on charges of allegedly colluding with seven other gang members in the murder of a key member of a rival Yakuza criminal syndicate in 2003.