JP/13/Thai

JP/13/Thai

Thais seize Indonesian ship smuggling oil from Singapore =

Thai customs authorities seized an Indonesian freighter and arrested its captain on charges of oil smuggling, officials said Monday in Bangkok.

Indonesian citizen Totok Suprapto, 40, was arrested at about midnight Sunday night as his ship, the MV Pelangi Frontier, was off-loading diesel oil at a pier in Songkhla province, 680 kilometers south of Bangkok, Thai officials said.

Sunthorn Sisangfah, the director of Songkhla's Customs Department, said the ship had apparently been modified to smuggle oil.

He said the captain had confessed to smuggling 65,000 liters of diesel from Singapore.

"We have been watching this ship closely," he said. "We caught them while they were unloading their cargo."

Sunthorn said the ship had previously been used to ship oil and gas drilling equipment but appeared to have been specially modified for oil smuggling.

"If it's confirmed that the ship was illegally modified to smuggle oil, it will be confiscated," he said. -- DPA