- 25/08/01

Thailand Sentences 17 to Death for Drug Trafficking

BANGKOK  - Thailand's criminal court has sentenced 17 convicted drugs traffickers to death in a single day, a report said Saturday.

 The sentences handed down late on Friday follow the July 25 sentencing of 19 drug dealers to death, the largest number ever handed the maximum penalty in one day.

 Twelve men and five women were convicted in six separate cases on Friday of trafficking more than one million speed pills, or methamphetamines, the Bangkok Post reported.

 It said two of the men were under 18 years old. Four of those sentenced to death were foreigners, two from neighboring Myanmar and two from Laos.

 Suspects caught with more than 100 grams of class-A narcotics are under Thai law eligible for the death sentence.

 Fighting drug trafficking and growing addiction levels among young people has been one of the top priorities of the government since it swept to power at the start of this year.

 Thailand forms part of the notorious ``Golden Triangle'' -- where the Thai, Myanmar and Laotian borders meet -- one of the world's top heroin-producing regions.

 But the production of methamphetamines has been increasingly supplanting opium and heroin as the main threat.

 Thai authorities estimate the number of the stimulant tablets being trafficked across its borders from makeshift factories run by ethnic minority gangs in Myanmar will reach 800 million this year.