Police in central Thua Thien-Hue Province have cracked down on a ring that trafficked marijuana from Laos to Vietnam’s central city of Hue, seizing six traffickers and their marijuana.

>> Vietnamese-Australians seized with 4 kg of heroin at airport 

The arrested include Nguyen Van Thuong, 23, Hoang Anh Kiet, 21, Le Xuan Phuc, 36, Nguyen Tran Hung, 28, Le Trung Duong, 33, and Tran Dang Can. All of them are residents of the city. According to the case file, Can and Truong took a bus to Laos through the Ta Khet border gate to buy 7 kg of marijuana from a Laotian. In order to avoid detection, they hired a stevedore to bring the cannabis into Vietnam through the Lao Bao border gate. They later brought the drugs to Quang Tri Province’s Dong Ha City before continuing on to Hue. Upon arriving in Hue, Can phoned Kiet asking him to take delivery of the marijuana. When Kiet and his accomplices were loading the drugs onto a motorbike, anti-drug police, who were acting on a tip-off from a source, rushed in and seized all of them. During interrogations, Can and Thuong confessed to police that they began transnational drug trafficking activities in March 2013, and had brought a large volume of drugs from Laos to Hue to sell to drug wholesalers. These wholesalers would in turn distribute drugs to retailers in Hue or sell them directly to drug addicts, the traffickers said.    In related news, customs officers at Tan Son Nhat Airport, Ho Chi Minh City, detected and seized 12 heroin cakes weighing 4.18 kg from two Vietnamese-Australian women who were about to fly to Australia on May 21. P.T.D., 36, and P.T.T.Q, 31, both of Australian nationality, were caught hiding the cakes in their suitcases when they were carrying out procedures to board flight VN773 to Sydney that day.

Customs offers handed over the traffickers and the heroin to anti-drug police for investigation.