Thai customs nab Japanese drug trafficker

BANGKOK (AFP): Thai Customs officers charged a Japanese woman with drug trafficking this afternoon after she was arrested just before boarding a Thai Airways flight to Osaka, officials said. Customs officers searched Tamaki Nagayama, 29, and found 1,300 amphetamine tablets strapped to her stomach. Nagayama confessed she was trafficking in drugs and helped by friends from Thailand and Myanmar, said Suwut Phathumma of the Customs Drugs Suppression unit. “She confessed that she had trafficked drugs six times already,” he said. Customs officicers later searched an apartment in downtown Bangkok and arrested a Thai woman and a man from Myanmar and found another 600 amphetamine tablets. Nagayama was charged with possessing, trafficking and smuggling a first grade drug, an offence which can carry the death sentence here.