April 22, 2007
THEY are promised love and money.
Some single Malaysian women are lavished with expensive gifts and they get to go on expensive overseas holidays.
But it's a love story with a cruel twist.
They are used as unsuspecting pawns by Malaysian drug agents to traffick drugs overseas.
This year, 13 Malaysian women have been arrested for trafficking drugs overseas.
In the past few days alone, two women in their early 20s were caught smuggling drugs into China, reported New Straits Times (NST).
A few days before that, another Malaysian woman was arrested at an airport in Lima, Peru, after she was found in possession of an undisclosed amount of cocaine.
The woman was on her way to Madrid, Spain, when police in the South American country nabbed her.
The women had no idea they were carrying drugs.
Federal Narcotics Department director Datuk Abang Abdul Wahap Abang Julai told NST that these women were usually approached by foreigners who were 'recruiting agents' for drug syndicates.
He said: 'The agents prey on single women, between the ages of 20 and 30, who are doing part-time jobs.
'They get into a relationship with the women, take them on overseas holidays and then, ask them to carry packages for them to another country.
'These women are so gullible and they do not suspect that the packages they are carrying contain drugs.
'They avoid sending these women to countries with tough anti-drug trafficking laws like Singapore. That is why more such cases are surfacing in South America, China, Australia and Europe.'