MANILA, Philippines—With the recent successful arrest of various drug couriers, international drug traffickers are now resorting to abducting individuals who are then forced to work as drug mules, according to police officials.

This new modus was uncovered this week when the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group rescued Jayson Ordinario, 22, from two drug trafficking suspects who were set to fly him to Macau after forcing him to swallow tubes filled with heroin.

“I believe the PNP has broken the backbone of another international drug syndicate,” said Jefferson Soriano, PNP deputy chief for operations.

Police stopped a taxi carrying the three men in Pasay City on Monday following a tip-off from the parents of Ordinario.

Ordinario, who had worked briefly in Macau, told police he was an unwilling courier and was not being treated as a suspect, authorities said.

Ordinario said he and his wife were walking along Tuazon Street in Balic-Balic, Manila, on their way to the Quiapo Church last Sunday, when two men alighted from a taxi and forced him to board the vehicle.

He said the men blindfolded him and took him to an undisclosed place in Quiapo.

At gunpoint, Ordinario said the pair ordered him to swallow 34 plastic tubes the size of 12-gauge shotgun bullets.

“They forced me to swallow the tubes with some soft drink. They warned me something bad would happen to me if I did not comply,” he said.

Laboratory tests confirmed the 11-gram tubes contained high-grade heroin worth P77,000 each, Soriano told reporters.

“We recovered P3 million worth of high-grade heroin from [Ordinario’s] body,” he said.

Soriano said Ordinario’s suspected kidnappers, Jhun Ennumeng and Elpidio Gonzales, did not resist arrest.

He said the suspects, who were found with six similar plastic tubes, were believed to be part of an international drug syndicate that smuggles heroin using human couriers who are made to carry the chemicals in their stomach.

“This only proves that the Philippines is being used as a transshipment point of syndicates to smuggle illegal drugs to China and other Asian countries,” Soriano said.

Soriano said Ennumeng admitted that he himself swallowed the plastic tubes after he bought the illegal drugs in Malaysia. With Agence France-Presse