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SEOUL: South Korean police said Friday that nine people have been arrested for trying to smuggle tons of chemicals for heroin production to Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents.
Police said one Afghan, two Pakistanis, two Indians and four Koreans were detained for trying to use South Korea as a shipping point for several tons of acetic anhydride destined for southern Afghanistan.
The chemical is heated with morphine, an opium derivative, to make heroin.
In cooperation with the international police organisation Interpol, South Korean police were also hunting three foreigners who had fled abroad, Oh Ki-Duk, an investigator, told AFP.
Police confiscated 12 tons of acetic anhydride in a chemical engineering factory in the Seoul suburb of Ansan and arrested two people including a 47-year-old suspected Taliban member, he said.
"The key Afghan suspect admitted he did it at the instigation of the Taliban," Oh said. "But he claimed he is not a member of the Taliban."
He said the suspect had tried to smuggle the chemical, disguised as motor oil, into Afghanistan through Iran.
Oh said the Afghan came to South Korea on a forged passport and recruited Pakistani and Indian workers in the country. "Despite his denial, we have circumstantial evidence that he is a Taliban member," he said.
In a separate operation led by Pakistanis, police said about 50 tons of the chemical had already been shipped to Afghanistan between April last year and March this year. It was labelled as disinfectant.
One Pakistani suspect was arrested in a Seoul suburb, and another who had acquired South Korean citizenship was detained in the United Arab Emirates, he said.
"Legal steps are being taken to repatriate the suspect arrested in the United Arab Emirates," Oh said.
The operations were funded by the hawala money transfer network widely used in the Middle East, police said.
The 62 tons of acetic anhydride cost about 360 million won (US$344,800) but could be used to produce nearly 30 tons of heroin, Yonhap news agency quoted investigator Kim Ki-Yong as saying.
"The suspects had money transferred from accounts suspected to be linked to hawala, and they acknowledged they had received orders from the Taliban," Kim said.
The acetic anhydride was imported from Japan through several Korean dealers.
The investigation started in March after Interpol discovered 14 tons of the chemical which had been shipped from Korea in the southern Pakistani port of Karachi.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Afghanistan produced 8,200 tons of opium base last year, 92 per cent of the worldwide total.
The report also noted that 80 per cent of the output came from five southern provinces where Taliban insurgents profit from drug-trafficking.
Last year 23 South Korean missionaries were captured and held hostage in Afghanistan by members of the Taliban.
Two of them were murdered before the South Korean government reached an undisclosed deal to free the remainder.
South Korea is a relatively drug-free nation, with just 7,709 people arrested in 2006 for drug offences. But officials say it is becoming a more popular international transit point for cocaine and "ice."
- AFP/yb
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