The federal court has ordered the continued detention of Yuan Rong Zhao, a 41-year-old man who was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents on Friday for allegedly distributing methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d on Saipan. <\/p>\n
At a detention hearing on Tuesday, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona found probable cause to believe that Zhao has committed an offense for which a maximum prison term of 10 years or more is prescribed.<\/p>\n
Manglona also determined that Zhao is a flight risk.<\/p>\n
The judge noted that Zhao, a Chinese national, has no ties to the community, has no work or family in the CNMI, and does not have any other interest in remaining in the Commonwealth. <\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney Rami Badawy\u2019s asked for Zhao\u2019s continued detention pending future proceedings.<\/p>\n
Court-appointed defense counsel Michael Dotts opposed Badawy\u2019s motion.<\/p>\n
Preliminary hearing will be on Jan. 16. Zhao was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshal. <\/p>\n
DEA agents arrested Zhao after the DEA filed a criminal complaint charging him with one count of distribution of methamphetamine.<\/p>\n
A DEA special agent stated in an affidavit that a confidential source managed to buy $400 worth of \u201cice\u201d from Zhao outside the latter\u2019s home in San Antonio on March 6, 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The federal court has ordered the continued detention of Yuan Rong Zhao, a 41-year-old man who was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents on Friday for allegedly distributing methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d on Saipan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}