Malaysian drug mule held at Sydney airport

A Malaysian woman, 26, has been held on suspicion of smuggling drugs into Australia last week.
She apparently swallowed small packets of drugs in a bid to escape detection. The woman was detained at the Sydney International Airport after arriving on a flight from Phuket, Thailand.A federal police spokesman said the woman was believed to have behaved in a suspicious manner at the airport and this caught the attention of the Customs and Border Protection officers."The woman was stopped and her luggage searched thoroughly. Despite not finding anything, the authorities were suspicious and believed that the woman had swallowed the drugs," the spokesman said.

"She was taken to a nearby hospital where X-rays showed more than two dozen little white packets in her stomach. After being questioned, the woman admitted she had been paid US$5,000 (RM17,600) to smuggle the drugs."It is understood 25 packets of heroin, weighing about 500g, were retrieved from the woman. The drugs are believed to be worth several thousand Australian dollars.Drug syndicates in Malaysia had also used a Filipino to smuggle drugs abroad. The woman, in her 30s, was arrested recently by airport authorities in Hong Kong on arrival from Kuala Lumpur. She was found to have 42 packets of heroin, weighing 206g, in her stomach.Bukit Aman is probing the possibility that the two cases may be connected to the arrest of four Africans, one of whom was a woman, in Jalan Ampang on Tuesday.Police found 16.5kg of heroin, valued at RM1.3 million, on them. Police later picked up two Pakistanis.The six are believed to have used Malaysia as a transit for distributing the drugs. The heroin is believed to have been smuggled from Afghanistan via Pakistan with Australia as its final destination.