Thirty people who were caught smoking crystal methamphetamine at a video arcade in Phnom Penh on Saturday were on Thursday jailed on charges of drug use and distribution, a police official said.
Born Sam Ath, a deputy municipal police chief who led the raid of the three-story arcade in Tuol Kok district on Saturday afternoon, said 28 men and a woman were charged by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court with illegal drug use, while one man was charged with illegal drug distribution.
“They were put in pretrial detention at prison after their hearing at the court,” Mr. Sam Ath said, adding that investigators were continuing to search for the arcade’s owner, an Interior Ministry police official named Chea Chamroeun.
Officials at the court could not be reached Thursday.
In a separate case, 13 people who were caught smoking crystal meth at an Internet cafe in Siem Reap City on Saturday evening, including teenagers as young as 14, were on Monday charged—12 with drug use and one with distribution—and sent to the provincial prison to await trial, according to Yin Strang, a clerk at the Siem Reap Provincial Court.
