Drug couriers hired by way of social networks

ILOILO CITY, Philippines  — Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are the most common venues used by unscrupulous individuals to recruit illegal drug couriers.

This was revealed by Undersecretary Jose Gutierrez, Jr., director general of the Philippine Drug Enforcement (PDEA) and Jose Fabia, director general of the Philippine Information Agency (PIA during the Strategic Planning Workshop and launching of the Anti-Drug Courier Program at the Sarabia Manor Hotel and Convention Center yesterday.

Fabia said international drug syndicates, who are mainly West Africans, would search these social networking sites to look for their possible victims.

"Usually, they are targeting women who professed to have complicated relationship status. So, if you fall into their modus operandi, indeed, you will complicate your life even further," he said.

Gutierrez said these illegal drug traders from South Africa would befriend unsuspecting Filipino women, wooing and later marrying them. "When they are already into the relationship, they would force the woman to be couriers of illegal drugs to other countries," he said.

Aside from befriending potential recruits, the modus operandi of syndicates include meeting victims through casual acquaintance, offering $2000 for every successful operation, and providing plane tickets for drug couriers.

As such, Filipina couriers became willing and unwilling victims, Gutierrez said.

In 1993, the Task Force Drug Couriers disclosed that there were only two recorded drug courier cases.

By January this year, however, the number skyrocketed to 689. Of the 689 cases, 431 are females (63 percent) while 258 (37 percent) are males.

"The sad part is 79 of them are currently facing death penalty in China, six of whom were facing death with no reprieve, while 73 were sentenced to death with a 2-year reprieve," said Gutierrez.

Asia and the Pacific accounted for 326 of the 689 drug courier incidents; 152 in the Americas; 125 in Europe; and 86 in Middle East and Africa, he said.

These Filipino drug couriers would try to conceal illegal drugs by hiding these in their luggage and suitcases (31 percent); ingestion/swallowing (19 percent); placing in books/bottles/parcels (7 percent); and other methods like undergoing minor operations and placing them in shoeboxes (43 percent).

These methods prompted PDEA to form a task force that would solve the growing problem of increasing number of Filipinos being used as illegal drug couriers, also known as "mules."

To prevent, if not to lessen, the incidence of Filipinos being as drug couriers, PDEA formed a task force to deal with the growing problem of illegal drug couriers or "mules."

The task force has been coordinating also with counterpart agencies of other countries for the formulation and execution of bilateral or regional moves against recruitment of Filipinos as drug couriers. (FREEMAN)