Kuala Lumpur - A Malaysian court has charged four Taiwan men with trafficking 1,439 kilogrammes of drugs worth 61 million ringgit (16.4 million dollars), official news reports said Friday. The four chemists, aged 30 to 36, pleaded not guilty to the charge of trafficking the hypnotic drug nimetazepam, better known as Erimin or Eramin 5, the official Bernama news agency.
If found guilty, the four men would face mandatory death sentences by hanging.
The seizure, recorded as the biggest drugs haul in the country, came during a March 22 raid on a factory in the southern state of Johor.
Nimetazepan was originally made to treat insomnia but is often sold in Asia as a substitute for ecstasy.
Police also seized machines used to process the drugs, about 430 kilogrammes of fine and coarse drug powder, and thousands of pills in the raid.
