15 arrested for role in container theft

JAKARTA (JP): The Tanjung Priok Seaport Police have arrested 15 men on suspicion of stealing export commodities from a container worth more than one billion rupiah.

The Seaport Police chief, Lt. Col. Arie Soebowo told reporters at a press conference yesterday that the container was on its way to Tanjung Priok port from the manufacturer of the goods in Cikarang, Bekasi.

"We presume the theft was led by a notorious container robber, RAS, who had just been released from Cipinang penitentiary several months ago," said Arie, who was accompanied by the city police spokesman Lt. Col. Iman Haryatna and the off-shore beach guards unit chief, M. Sabil S.

"The modus operandi of the robbery is changing the truck's direction away from its original destination, cutting the containers' lock, looting the goods and then sealing back the lock," he said.

"They started operating in January. They work quite professionally. They have a kind of `work division'," he said.

"The driver [working for the transportation company], allegedly a member of the gang, turned away the container truck from its Priok destination to Ciputat, where six members of the gang had been waiting. The container held more than 240 bags of titanium dioxide, hundreds of Fila sports shoes, and 1,420 units of Samsung and Hitachi electronic units, such as LCD players and television sets, " he said.

"There, the driver of the truck, together with six friends, unloaded 240 bags of titanium dioxide (a chemical substance to soften animal skin) and kept the chemical substance in a warehouse in Batu Ceper in Tangerang, West Java after opening the container's locks with an electric iron saw," he said. The other stolen goods were distributed among themselves, he added.

"Then they sealed back the locks with steel glue and drove the truck to Tanjung Priok, where we apprehended them," he said.

"We started to trace them as soon as we received a report from PT Samsung Metrodata Electronics on May 24, 1996 that its customer in Hamburg port, Germany had received empty containers," he said.

"We managed to arrest all of the alleged robbers from May 30 to July 11," he said. (26)