A 23-year-old British man was arrested in Bangkok after Thai police allegedly found more than 9kg of crystal methamphetamine in his hotel room.
George Wilson from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, was arrested in the city’s red-light district on Monday evening after officers tracked an international drug gang’s movements.
Police alleged that Mr Wilson was handed a suitcase containing the narcotics by a fellow Briton who instructed him to take it through the Suvarnabhumi airport to a contact abroad.
The drugs, concealed in 10 green foil bags labelled Chinese tea and hidden under flip flops and a white towel, were found following a tip-off to the Lumpini police, the LBC reported.
Footage of the arrest showed Mr Wilson denying any knowledge of the suitcase’s contents, insisting: “I don’t know what it is.”
However, Pongtanin Bamrungsuksawat, deputy chief of Metropolitan Police Division 5, who acted as translator during the arrest, later said the suspect “confirmed that the items were his”.
“The charges were explained to him along with his rights and he was handcuffed and taken into custody for legal processing,” he said.
A chemical test confirmed that the substance was methamphetamine, police said.
“The suspect’s full name is George Henry Allaway Wilson, born on 29 July 2002, from High Wycombe,” Lieutenant colonel Noppha Thongbo of the Lumpini police said. “He was arrested on 29 September at 6pm. He is currently in custody and will be taken to the Bangkok South Criminal Court tomorrow for detention in prison.”
Colonel Siranawitcha Intorn, superintendent of the Crime Suppression Division, said Mr Wilson was suspected of being part of a cross-border smuggling network, noting the large quantity of drugs involved.
“The amount of drugs seized was also very large. The highest levels of the Royal Thai Police have coordinated to make the arrest,” he said.
Thai authorities suspected the meth was made in Myanmar, a neighbouring country plagued by civil conflict, before being transported to Thailand, a regional transit hub for narcotics.
Importing or exporting narcotics like methamphetamine carries the death penalty in Thailand, though life imprisonment is more commonly imposed. However, mitigating circumstances may reduce the sentence to 10-20 years.
The UK Foreign Office said it was “in contact with the Thai authorities following the arrest of a British man”.
Mr Wilson, a former pupil of the Hurst Lodge School in Surrey, had been in Thailand for two weeks before his arrest.
