More profit in drugs than car repairs

Press, 29 November 1979, Page 22

More profit in drugs than car repairs

NZPA Bangkok Siri Sirikul, a veteran Thai narcotics trafficker, found drug smuggling paid him much more handsomely than car repair work hut it- could also land him in front of a firing squad. Siri was arrested last month in Malaysia after being on the run from the Thai police for more than two years since he escaped from a Bangkok jail. His life story is typical of many Thais who become involved in narcotics trafficking — but with a difference. Siri reached the top of his chosen career and became a dealer on an international scale.

The son of a poor Bangkok family, he became a trainee mechanic in the city at the age of 14. Eleven years later he decided to open his own garage and was then approached to smuggle shipments of

opium from northern Thailand. “It paid much more than repairing cars,” Siri said. Using his experience as a mechanic he found ways of building secret compartments in trucks and became involved in trafficking directly from the north to the south of Thailand and into Malaysia. His associations in Malaysia widened and he turned to heroin as well as opium smuggling and extended his operations to Europe. An arrest by narcotics agents in the Netherlands in 1976 proved his downfall. Some 68kg of heroin was smuggled into Bremen, West Germany, hidden among a charcoal shipment in a freighter. Two Malaysian couriers taking it on to Amsterdam were arrested, Siri and a Thai accomplice escaped the subsequent police hunt, but

they were arrested » month later, together with a Hong Kong Chinese, at a Bangkok hotel. In their possession was B.4kg of heroin.

As the ringleader, Siri was sentenced to life imprisonment and jailed at the Bang Kwang maximum security prison in Bangkok. Within six months he escaped after bribing officials with 5U512.500. A tour bus carried him to south Thailand and six months later he sneaked into Malaysia without a passport or border pass and rented two houses at Penang and Butterworth. His life of ease came to an end late in September when the Malaysian police arrested him and the Thai authorities extradited him to Bangkok. Questioned as to his thoughts on being back in Thailand, he quipped. “Thailand is my country. I will die here.” <