Pubdate: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: William K. Rashbaum Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) FOUR IN BANGKOK CHARGED IN NEW JERSEY HEROIN SEIZURE Federal authorities said yesterday that they had seized 126 pounds of heroin hidden in bales of cotton towels on a container ship docked in Elizabeth, N.J., and announced charges in the case against four people tied to a Burmese warlord who has long been a dominant force in the Southeast Asian heroin trade. The four, who were arrested by Royal Thai Police in Bangkok on Jan. 19, include a wife of the warlord, Khun Sa. Officials said they were being held in Bangkok pending an extradition request, and were charged with conspiracy and importing heroin in an indictment that federal prosecutors filed yesterday in United States District Court in Brooklyn. The heroin was seized last month. The prosecutors and officials from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration said the charges, coming 10 days after the arrest in Thailand of one of Khun Sa's key lieutenants, represented a significant blow to his organization, which they say has long dominated heroin production and trafficking in the region. "Definitely the organization is crumbling, but we feel they are still very powerful in Burma, where he is still operating," said Felix Jimenez, the special agent in charge of the drug agency's New York office. The indictment stems from a nine-month operation in which an undercover D.E.A. agent won the trust of the four suspects and convinced them that he was a major figure in New York's Chinese underworld, law enforcement officials said. The agent, who speaks Mandarin and the Yunnanese dialect, met with the suspects in Thailand in June and October and, after returning to New York in the fall, kept in almost daily telephone contact with them, one official said. He played his role so well, the official said, and they were so keen on making him their wholesale distributor, that they provided the heroin on consignment, an extremely rare move in Asian drug deals. The heroin, from the mountains of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was shipped from the capital, Yangon, officials said. It arrived on the container ship Cho Yang Phoenix in Port Newark in Elizabeth on Jan. 11 and was seized after D.E.A. and Customs Service agents searched the ship, court papers said. The heroin was found secreted in 12 bales of cotton towels. Mr. Jimenez said the case was also significant because the heroin trade in New York, and in the rest of the United States, had become dominated by Colombian and Mexican heroin, rather than the purer so-called China white from Southeast Asia that dominated in the 1980's and early 1990's. The market changed when Colombian traffickers, who had glutted the United States with cocaine, began producing cheaper heroin and flooded the United States with it. The case underscored the efforts of traffickers in Southeast Asian heroin to win back a piece of the market, officials said, and revealed new trafficking patterns and routes that could provide investigators with a road map for future cases. It was investigated by a special drug agency unit called Group 41, which focuses exclusively on Asian heroin traffickers. Prosecutors and D.E.A. officials identified the woman who they said is one of Khun Sa's wives as Hiu-Lan Peng. They said the woman was also known as Ms. Hung and was in her 50's, though they could provide no exact age or address for her. The officials said that the warlord, because of his power and standing, had many wives, and that Hiu-Lan Peng was known as one of the "minor wives," although some press reports in Thailand at the time of her arrest described her as an ex-wife. The other woman charged in the case, Tzen Shiung Lee, is in her late 20's, officials said. The two men charged in the case are An-Hui Tso of Mandaly, Myanmar, who one official said operates a textile factory there, and Guo Xing Sae Chen of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Officials from the drug agency said the wholesale value of the heroin seized was about $7.3 million. Khun Sa, whose army long dominated the region's heroin trade under the guise of fighting for self-determination for the insurgent Shan tribal group, surrendered to government forces in 1996 and has been living under house arrest in Yangon, officials said. But the D.E.A. and federal prosecutors contend that he is still a dominant force in the region, using family members and associates to control the flow of heroin from the lush Golden Triangle formed by Myanmar, Thailand and China. In the remote and rugged mountains there, the opium crop that is later refined into heroin has long been the staple that finances the daily needs of the fiercely independent hill tribes. Myanmar is the world's second-largest source of illicit opium and heroin after Afghanistan, according to the State Department's 1999 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. The report, the most recent available, said that largely due to drought, opium cultivation and production in Myanmar had declined significantly for the third consecutive year. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk