Human trafficking suspect arrested after 12 years on the run
Woman accused of supplying ‘slave labour’ to fishing trawler operators
Police have arrested a woman on charges of human trafficking in connection with forced labour on fishing trawlers after she was on the run for more than a decade.
Sompong Sroithong, 62, was taken into custody after officers stopped her pickup truck in Muang district of Samut Prakan on Monday, said Pol Maj Gen Sarut Kwaengsopha, commander of the police Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division (ATPD).
Ms Sompong was one of five suspects named in a warrant issued by the Criminal Court in 2012. All the others had been apprehended earlier.
Police had been hunting her since a Thai-African victim filed a complaint with the Social Development and Welfare Department in 2012, saying he had been deceived by a promise of attractive wages to work on a fishing boat.
The man said Ms Sompong forced him to work on one trawler after another as a slave labourer, according to police. He was finally dumped into the sea in the Gulf of Thailand by a skipper before being rescued by the crew of a Vietnamese cargo ship.
Pol Maj Gen Sarut said an investigation found Ms Sompong was the ringleader of a gang preying on Thai men and foreigners to supply them to work as slaves on fishing vessels.
She had been in prison for three years before being released, according to the ATPD chief, who did not provide details of the previous charges.
(Photo: Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division via Wassayos Ngamkham)bangkok post
