An Australian man who’s a member of the notorious “Hells Angels” motorcycle gang and his Thai wife were sentenced to death for smuggling drugs by the Thai court yesterday, after they were arrested in December last year.
Luke Joshua Cook, 34, and his 40-year-old Thai wife, Kanyarat Wedphitak, stand accused of attempting to smuggle half a ton of crystal meth from China into Thailand in December 2015.
Police believed Cook tried to transport the drugs from a boat moored in the Gulf of Thailand but was spooked by a patrol boat and threw a large amount of the “ice” overboard.
Around 50 kilograms of the drug later washed up on Thailand’s southern coast.
Thai police claimed that Cook was paid $US10 million (THB320 million) by the Hells Angels to smuggle the drugs for later shipment to Australia, according to Australian newspaper The Age.
The Australian Hells Angels are notorious for prostitution, racketeering, drugs, and arms trafficking, and have expanded operations into Southeast Asia.
The couple was sentenced to be executed, but that is expected to be commuted to life in prison, according to media reports.
Capital punishment has become a hot topic of debate in the kingdom after Thailand’s Department of Corrections executed a 26-year-old murderer by lethal injection in June of this year — marking the first time the country’s death penalty has been employed in nine years.
Since then, many activists and international human rights groups including Amnesty has condemned the country for the use of capital punishment.
Additional reporting by AFP
