A Hong Kong passenger who was found concealing methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d in his luggage during an inspection by Customs inspectors at the Francisco-C. Ada-Saipan International Airport last Thursday, entered a guilty plea in federal court yesterday. <\/p>\n
At the scheduled detention hearing yesterday afternoon, the parties informed U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona that defendant Nairu Li signed a plea deal with the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
Li, 45, pleaded guilty to an information charging him with one count of unlawful importation of a controlled substance. The offense carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. <\/p>\n
A complaint was originally filed charging the same offense against the defendant.<\/p>\n
Manglona accepted Li\u2019s guilty plea and set the sentencing for Oct. 20, 2017 at 9am.<\/p>\n
Attorney Colin Thompson is court-appointed counsel for Li.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney Garth Backe, counsel for the U.S. government, said according to the factual basis of the plea agreement Li brought from Hong Kong over 5 grams of \u201cice\u201d hidden in his luggage at the airport last Thursday.<\/p>\n
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force Officer Raymond M. Renguul revealed that Li arrived on a Hong Kong Airlines flight from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
Renguul in the complaint disclosed that the inspector became suspicious after noticing that Li was visibly shaking as he was removing a cigarette pack from his jacket.<\/p>\n
Renggul said inspectors found \u201cice\u201d hidden in an orange tube-like container placed in Li\u2019s luggage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Hong Kong passenger who was found concealing methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d in his luggage during…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3474,295,12286,17337],"class_list":["post-255277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attorney-colin-thompson","tag-hk","tag-hong-kong-airlines","tag-nairu-li"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255277","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}