by ladylilac on Sat Jul 17, 2010 2:05 am
Saturday July 17, 2010
Missing Kuching lass caught as drug mule in China
Little Nicole in tug-of-love war
KUALA LUMPUR: The polytechnic student who went missing with an African man for more than two months has been located – she was caught at the Haikou airport in China as a suspected drug smuggler.
Investigations revealed that Christina Luke Niju, 22, had arrived in Hainan on April 29 and had been issued a visa until July 29.
On Wednesday, her distraught parents had sought help from MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong to find their daughter after she failed to return home.
Chong said Christina, a Kuching Polytechnic student, was arrested on June 29 and had since been detained at the Hainan detention centre in Guangzhou.
I’ll miss you: Nicole kissing her younger brother, Chen Keat, goodbye. Looking on is Kristina, who will be returning to Indonesia for a month with her son to consult her family on her future plan.
“She is still being investigated. When the process is done, we can arrange for the parents to see her in China,” Chong told a press conference here yesterday.
He said Christina’s was one of the 10 cases over the last year involving Malaysians being used as drug mules to China.
He said seven of them had been sentenced to between 15 years and life imprisonment in various parts of China while the trial of one woman was pending. He added that a Malaysian man had been executed.
He said all these cases involved African men who conned their victims into becoming drug mules.
“I believe this trend is becoming very serious and I will brief MCA leaders about these cases so that this issue can be raised in the Cabinet,” said Chong.
On April 28, Christina had told a roommate that she would be going on a business trip to China with an African man named James.
Her parents lodged a missing person’s report with the police in Sandakan, who then passed the information to the Kuching police.