Police have arrested a woman on charges of human trafficking in connection with forced labour on fishing boats after she was on the run for more than a decade.
Sompong Sroithong, 62, was arrested after officers stopped her pickup truck in Samut Prakan on Monday.
Police had been hunting her since a Thai-African victim filed a complaint with the Social Development and Welfare Department in 2012, saying he had been deceived by a promise of high wages to work on a fishing boat.
The man said Ms Sompong forced him to work on one trawler after another as a slave labourer, according to police. He was finally dumped into the sea in the Gulf of Thailand by a skipper before being rescued by a Vietnamese cargo ship.
Police said an investigation found Ms Sompong was the ringleader of a gang preying on Thai men and foreigners to supply them to work as slaves on fishing boats.
