Jakarta - Police arrested an Indonesian man Tuesday for
trying to smuggle three kilograms of heroin estimated to be worth
about 270,000 dollars into the country.
The Indonesian citizen, identified only as W, was arrested by
anti-narcotics police at the parking lot of Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta
International airport, after he arrived on an AirAsia flight from
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Brigadier General Harry Montolalu, director of the national
police's criminal investigation department, said the man successfully
got through the airport's security checkpoints.
'The suspect flew in from West Africa and Malaysia. The three
kilograms of heroin passed through security checkpoints in other
countries but we managed to arrest him here,' the state-run Antara
news agency quoted Montolalu as saying.
The man was only a courier and believed to be member of a West
African-Indonesian drug syndicate, he said.
Police estimated the confiscated heroin to be worth up to 3
billion rupiah (272,700 dollars).
An Indonesian court in July last year sentenced an Indonesian
woman to life in prison for trying to smuggle more than 3 kilograms
of heroin into the country.
Indonesia defends its death penalty as a necessary deterrent in a
country with a growing drug problem. Government authorities recently
vowed to speed up the executions of nearly 70 drug traffickers on
death row despite international calls for the country to halt capital
punishment.
Nearly half of those on death row are foreigners, including three
Australians involved in the failed 'Bali Nine' plot to smuggle more
than 8 kilograms of heroin to Australia in 2005.
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