drug smuggling task force arrested members of an international drug syndicate and in the process rescued a Filipina about to become an unwitting ‘drug mule.' The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), along with members of the inter-agency Task Force on Drug Couriers (TFDC), arrested at least 13 members of an international drug trafficking organization, PDEA Director General Dionisio Santiago said in a briefing Thursday. In a two-week operation, dubbed “Homerun,” which started March 17 in China, Santiago said those arrested were nine Nigerian men, a Thai woman, a Malaysian woman and two Filipino women, all members of a syndicate operating in Thailand, Malaysia, China and the Philippines. About two kilograms of cocaine and a kilogram of heroin were also seized, the agency said. A Filipina, whose name was withheld by the task force, was supposed to transport illicit drugs, was also rescued and returned to her family in the Philippines. More Filipinos facing drug charges The rise in the number of Filipinos involved in drug smuggling mostly in Asia has prompted the government to create the TFDC on Feb. 8. Overseas-bound Filipinos have fallen prey to drug syndicates recruiting couriers, also known as mules, to transport illegal drugs inside their luggage or shoes or fabric buttons. Some syndicates have come up with other more dangerous ways of smuggling prohibited substances, like stuffing drugs inside the bodies of Filipino couriers.
