A Thai court has jailed a Cambodian woman for 50 years for procuring young women for prostitution and immigration violation, a court official said yesterday.

The official at Bangkok Criminal Court did not give details, but a UN agency said eight Cambodian women, aged 15 to 20, accused Khunthea, a Cambodian woman living in a Bangkok suburb, of selling them to a Malaysian brothel.

?According to their testimonies in the court, she was part of a regional human trafficking racket, of which another eight members are still at large and face arrest warrants,? UN official Pannada Changmannee told Reuters.

Panada, of the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (UNIAP), said Khunthea was arrested by Thai police in mid-2004 and her heavy jail term was the maximum punishment provided under Thai law.

?This successful prosecution is the first time that Cambodia and Thailand have worked together to prosecute a trafficker,? a UNIAP statement said. ?The prosecution rested on the testimony of eight Cambodian women, who left their home village in Cambodia believing they would be offered work as noodle annd clothes sellers in Bangkok,? it said. ?Instead, they were held in Samut Prakan before being sold into a Malaysian brothel by Ms. Khunthea,? it said, referring to a province near Bangkok.