KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: Malaysian girls should not fall for drug syndicates' offers of high-paying jobs in Europe, said Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar.

"Some of the girls are university graduates. I don't understand how they can be persuaded," the Home Minister said yesterday.

He was commenting on a news report that 20 Malaysian girls, mostly in their 20s, had been held in a house in Madrid by a drug smuggling syndicate.

Syed Hamid said he had met the parents of one of the two girls who had no clue what their daughter was up to and had been desperately trying to contact her.