Thai, Vietnamese men arrested with tiger carcasses

BANGKOK, May 16 (TNA) - Thai police on Wednesday arrested Thai and Vietnamese men with tiger carcasses destined for China. The Crime Suppression Division police apprehended Chawinthorn Thongthin and Vietnamese Ho Xuan Nhat at a rental house in Bangkok's Kannayao district with carcasses of two tigers, panthers and fishing cats, as well as a pickup truck. According to the police, the suspects had brought the carcasses from Malaysia, through the Sadao border pass in Thailand's southern Songkhla province, to be transported to China via Nong Khai Province in the northeastern Thai region, as well as neighbouring Laos and Vietnam. The arrested Thai man said that a Vietnamese hired him and the apprehended Vietnamese to transport the carcasses from Songkhla to the house in Kannayao, where another group of people would then bring the cargo to Nong Khai and the Vietnamese employer would be waiting to accept it in Laos. Both suspects were hired for 8,000 baht per trip and they made three trips a month on average. They usually covered such carcasses with packs of drinking water on their ways. The suspects were charged with violating the Thai Wildlife Carcass Act and the police are finding out if they were connected with some wildlife traffickers earlier captured in Thailand. Each tiger carcass is said to be priced at some 700,000 baht if it is smuggled out of the country, as all parts of it can be used. (TNA)