DHAKA: Bangladesh police on Saturday found the bullet-ridden bodies of two alleged Rohingya drug dealers in a southeastern coastal town notorious for its connection with the Myanmar meth trade.
Teknaf town police chief Prodip Kumar Das said the bodies were found lying next to a highway beside the sea and some 10,000 meth pills were recovered from their possession.
“Both of these refugees were... notorious drug dealers in the region. We’re suspecting they were killed in a gang fight over sharing profits,” he said.
The police said they were investigating the deaths but did not provide further information on the two men.
Over 720,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state since August 2017 and joined some 300,000 refugees already living in squalid camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district.
Bangladeshi authorities say local kingpins use the refugees — trapped in poverty and unlikely to return home any time soon — to transport “yaba” pills which are made in Myanmar meth labs.
Yaba is a methamphetamine-based, caffeine-cut stimulant that translates as “crazy medicine.”
The coastal town on the Naf river that divides the two neighbors is a key entry point through which yaba enters the South Asian nation’s multi-million dollar drug market.
In May Bangladesh launched a violent anti-drug crackdown which saw the deaths of at least 250 drug dealers, including 26 in Teknaf in the last three months.
Experts have compared the campaign with the Filipino anti-drug war of Rodrigo Duterte, in which police say they have killed nearly 5,000 alleged users and pushers — although rights groups say the toll is at least triple that.
Two alleged Rohingya drug dealers found dead in Bangladesh
Two alleged Rohingya drug dealers found dead in Bangladesh
- The police said they were investigating the deaths
- It is suspected that they were killed in a gang fight over sharing profits
Poland charges six with trying to smuggle sanctioned equipment to Russia
WARSAW: Four Belarusians and two Poles were detained and charged with attempting to smuggle to Russia devices used to automate the production of integrated circuits, used, among others, in the assembly of combat drones, Polish prosecutors said.
Warsaw has been warning of Russian and Belarusian attempts to destabilize countries backing Ukraine after Russia invaded the country on February 24, 2022.
On Wednesday, Polish prosecutors said the suspects were detained on February 18 and charged with attempting to smuggle through Belarus strategically significant equipment, which is under sanctions and which could be used in the production of military technology.
“Violation of the provisions of the sanctions act is classified as a crime, punishable by imprisonment for a period of no less than three years,” prosecutors said in a statement.
Three suspects were placed in pretrial detention for a period of three months, while the remaining three were placed under police supervision, bail, and a ban on leaving the country.
“Earlier actions by officers of the National Revenue Administration helped thwart an attempt to smuggle a machine, which contributed to the disruption of potential supplies of military equipment to the troops of the Russian Federation operating in eastern Ukraine,” prosecutors said.
