Carrying a death penalty load for US$300 is a very desperate act. I’d say there’s no need to make his life more difficult by getting him hooked, he clearly already is. Detention in Taiwan aint going to be a breeze, especially while straightening out. talk about a hang over. Duh! Umm, where am I? What happened?
HG
Cops and customs were really stupid, they should’ve let him go and follow him to his meeting point and catch a bigger fish … What do they have now? The look we caught a foreigner smugg’ling dope story … the guy could’ve been bait and probably meanwhile another guy jumped the line with 15 kilo in his bag, probably a Taiwanese … dumb, dumb, dumb
People who deal in or carry drugs do not necessarily use it themselves. You can be sure that the people who make the big money in the drugs business (I’m not talking about two-bit couriers) would never be so stupid as to get hooked themselves.[/quote]
He likes the money/compensation for being a mule, so screw him. Personally, I think he should be shot. Exactly what is Germany going to do about it? Stop selling Taiwan weapons? Maybe stop buying Taiwanese computers? 
Germany actually has zero leverage. Singapore is getting ready to execute an Australian drug smuggler and the Singaporean govenment has told the Australians to piss up a rope.
[quote]He was sentenced to death in March 2004 for carrying almost 400 grams of heroin. Calls for clemency from Australia have failed to change Singapore’s mind.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer plans to make a last ditch plea to save Nguyen’s life when he meets his Singaporean counterpart George Yeo at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) meeting next week.
“We’ve put an enormous amount of effort into trying to save Van Nguyen’s life, I’ve said all along … that I was very pessimistic that we would be able to turn this around,” he said.
Mr Yeo wrote to Mr Downer last week, rejecting the government’s most recent appeal for clemency for Nguyen.[/quote]
because the prospect of netting a single, unarmed, unconnected white boy in an airport, having no doubt been filled in as to which flight he was on, his name, description, what he was carrying etc. from foreign law enforcement is just the type of low risk, easy target, high “pat on the back” value policing that the incompetent tea drinking louts who call themselves law enforcement officers in Taiwan like…
if they let him in and tried to follow him to his drop there’d be a 95% chance they’d bungle the whole deal and loose him somehow and the remaining 5% chance would be negated by the fact that they’d then have to mount a risky operation to actually bust in on the transaction SWAT style, involving actual police work, in a dangerous situation, with local and obviously connected criminals… that is the last thing any Taiwanese “cop” would dream of doing… take on armed, locally connected, actual criminals?.. you must be joking… hang the lone, soft target, big nose out to dry… promotions all round and back to tea and Mahjong by lunchtime…
not to mention the bonus points for being able to give everyone a chance to shake the anti-foreigner stick and get on all the local soap-opera media channels and proudly show how they stopped the bastard foreigners from defiling their immaculate and quite superior Chinese culture with their foul narcotics…
Couldn’t have said it better …
because the prospect of netting a single, unarmed, unconnected white boy in an airport, having no doubt been filled in as to which flight he was on, his name, description, what he was carrying etc. from foreign law enforcement is just the type of low risk, easy target, high “pat on the back” value policing that the incompetent tea drinking louts who call themselves law enforcement officers in Taiwan like… [/quote]
I haven’t heard of too many police ops like this so can someone please show us the details of a successful police operation where a smuggler has arrived unexpectedly at an airport somewhere in the world and the customs/police force allowed him in, following him to his drop? Please don’t give an episode of Starsky and Hutch as an example.
There was this one episode of Kojack. They caught a whole bunch of guys in a hotel room after a gunfight. All the sofas got badly shot up – feathers and shit everywhere – but baldy guy never lost his lollipop.
Well…bald guys…what can you say? 
My take on this is that the Australian government are publicly appealing to domestic sentiment by appearing to do all they can for Nguyen, but if we look at Howard’s refusal to make a plea, it can be assumed they have acquiesced.
Perhaps they are readying the public for Indonesian intransigence on demanding at least two, or more, of the "Bali nine"take one for the team?
I see it as the price they are willing to pay for Howard’s poor relations within the region in the early days of his government. In any case, the Liberal party are no friends of regional drug runners or users.
On following the traffickers . . . the Australian Federal Police have come under fire for allowing the “Bali nine” to be arrested in Bali rather than be picked up on their return to Australia when it was joint - though mostly Australian - surveillance which led to their arrests. It could thus be argued, as certainly some of the Bali nine lawyers are, that the Australian police were seeking harsher penalties than they themselves could prosecute within Australia. A chilling thought.
HG
Since the police have to deal first hand with the results of heroin on a day to day basis, maybe they’re getting tired of lenient sentences being handed out.
[quote=“Comrade Stalin”]
because the prospect of netting a single, unarmed, unconnected white boy in an airport, having no doubt been filled in as to which flight he was on, his name, description, what he was carrying etc. from foreign law enforcement is just the type of low risk, easy target, high “pat on the back” value policing that the incompetent tea drinking louts who call themselves law enforcement officers in Taiwan like… [/quote]
I don’t think he was unexpected … if it was than everyday a bunch of people ‘act’ suspected.
It’s been done before and I believe it’s a coordinated intarnational action a while ago in Belgium, Holland and UK, but not the ‘starsky and hutch’ way, and sure not kojack way.
I even think he was bait, to get a larger shipment in …
I think that is a good observation Juba. Thailand and Taiwan have a long history of couriering. There were the gold smuggling scams, the business paper delivery systems, it is definitely in keeping with what people have done in the past for a free ticket and a small pay off. He must have been thinking, however, that Sam’s friend was really keen on his beans.
[quote] He must have been thinking, however, that Sam’s friend was really keen on his beans[/quote].
Would it be too cruel to pass on to the poor blighter that you can get beans at any Wellcome?
Might be right, those pigs’ll do anything to make sure no junky swipes their VCR and DVD players. I mean, how else will they record the Kojak replays? More seriously my feeling in Oz last time I was back was that the good citizens of suburbia would quite happily swing a few to ease their insurance premiums. Howard again taps the populist mood! And again he does it by proxy . . . last time was via Pauline Pantsdown, sorry, Hanson.
HG
I think that is a good observation Juba. Thailand and Taiwan have a long history of couriering. There were the gold smuggling scams, the business paper delivery systems, it is definitely in keeping with what people have done in the past for a free ticket and a small pay off. He must have been thinking, however, that Sam’s friend was really keen on his beans.[/quote]
Who would expect to get a free airline ticket, a mobile phone 7000NT and 300US$ for couriering a few cans of beans?
Didn’t the Taipei Times article quote the prosecutor as saying that he would be pursuing the death penalty in this case?
Even if they do, however, I can easily see Chen Shui-bian commuting it, as a show of Taiwan’s love of “human rights” … that would be a big star next to his name in the world of international politics and diplomacy.
Huang Guang Chen,
Yeah, I forgot about the part with Neddie -that was back in Australia. Anyone who hasn’t read that book should check it out. Better that the German got caught in Taiwan than in Thailand.
Sounds like he was a decoy… Pay some sad case to take a small amount through. Tip off customs. Take your huuuge consignment through while the police are busy.
Sad for him, but CANS OF BEANS? 
If it really was 6.1 kgs, it certainly was not a “diversion” Come on. They could’ve created a diversion with 1 kg or 500 g.
No drug-lord is going to produce a “diversion” that is the biggest drug bust of the year, valued at NT$100 million.
You just don’t understand Taiwanese culture, 1 kg come one, it would sounded an alarm that they only caught 1 kg and they would start looking for other runners …
6 kg … 100 million ‘street value’ … 50,000 in Thailand … big deal
[quote=“Ivich”]Sounds like he was a decoy… Pay some sad case to take a small amount through. Tip off customs. Take your huuuge consignment through while the police are busy.
Sad for him, but CANS OF BEANS? [/quote]
Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Send in 6 kgs on a big, dumb whitey courier who looks obvious, and tip off the customs agents. Then, get some respectable looking middle aged businessmen looking guys to take in 600kg of the shit.
Has Pink Floyd ever played in Singapore? Singing their odes of heroin?