C. Java woman gets death penalty for drug smuggling
Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang
A 27-year-old woman fell to the floor when the Tangerang District Court handed down the death penalty to her for her attempt to smuggle a kilogram of heroin into the country from Nepal.
Presiding judge Ade Komarudin said the defendant, Merry Utami, from Sukoharjo, Central Java, was found guilty of smuggling heroin at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Oct. 31 last year.
Komarudin said there were no mitigating factors determining a lighter sentence since the crime endangered the nation's future and the lives of thousands of people.
Clad in a long-sleeved white shirt and black pants, the short- haired woman kept her head bowed during the hearing, but she collapsed when the panel of judges read out her punishment.
Several visitors and officers from the prosecutor's office helped her to her feet and later carried her to the minivan that would take her to the Tangerang Women's Penitentiary.
Merry sobbed and repeatedly said she was sorry.
The judges' decision was in accordance with a recommendation made by prosecutor Puji Rahardjo, who had charged her under Article 82 of Law No. 22/1997 on drugs, which carries a maximum punishment of death.
According to the prosecutor, the defendant, who formerly worked in Taiwan and Hong Kong, arrived on Singapore Airlines flight SQ166 from Kathmandu. Customs officers became suspicious when the defendant, carrying an unusually thick handbag, appeared nervous and confused while passing through the customs checkpoint.
Customs officers took her to a special room to conduct a search, and inserted a needle into the side of her bag. The needle extracted white powder, which they suspected was heroin.
A test confirmed that it was pure heroin, weighing one kilogram in total.
Puji said that while the defendant was undergoing the search by customs officers, her cellular phone rang. The caller asked her to bring the heroin to Hotel Acacia in Central Jakarta.
Customs officers, along with several policemen, then accompanied the defendant to the hotel, but were unable to find the caller.
The unidentified man contacted Merry a second time and instructed her to go to the Megamatra hotel in Matraman, East Jakarta, however, he did not appear.
The defendant's lawyer, Wiwiek Sugiarti, stated that her client would appeal to the high court.
Over the past two years, the district court has sentenced to death 17 of the 18 who stood trial on similar charges.
Those sentenced to death for drug smuggling include five Nepalese, five Indonesians, three Nigerians, an Angolan, a Zimbabwean, a Pakistani and a Thai woman.
The only defendant to receive life imprisonment, Malawian Namaona Dennis, appealed to the high court, which in turn handed down the death sentence to him last December.
Despite the death penalty, drug smugglers do not seem deterred. In April this year, customs officers at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport arrested a 44-year-old Thai woman for attempting to smuggle in 450 grams of heroin.
The last death penalty was handed down by the Tangerang District Court in March to a 21-year-old Thai masseuse, who was convicted of smuggling 600 grams of heroin into the country last September from Thailand.