A treaty arrangement between Australia and Thailand has yet to be ratified by both countries. Once in place there may be a chance that Australian inmates of Thai prisons can return to Australia to serve their sentence. He has asked Thailand to give Ms Deane-Johns a suspended sentence and send her to a rehabilitation centre for six months before being returned to Australia. But it does not help Ms Deane-Johns that the proposed rehabilitation centre is Thailand's Thamkrabok Monastery in Lop Buri, just north of Bangkok. The monastery is also known as the Monastery of the Opium Pipe and is home to 21,000 people at any one time.
Thai authorities are suspicious of the place, which runs a radical detoxification program.
Many of its monks are former foreign mercenaries and they have been accused of recruiting hill tribe people from Thailand's border areas to trade drugs. 2000 West Australian Newspapers Limited All Rights Reserved.