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Airport-cocaine-drug
Plane passengers suspected of smuggling cocaine
JP/2/drug

Plane passenger suspected in cocaine smuggling attempt

Abdul Khalik
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The threat of a death sentence does not seem to have deterred
traffickers from trying to smuggle drugs into the country.

Customs and excise officials at Soekarno-Hatta International
Airport announced on Wednesday they had seized one kilogram of
cocaine with a street value of Rp 1 billion (US$105,000) from a
foreign passenger plane last week.

The head of the customs and excise office at the airport,
Nofrial, said a crew member of a KLM airplane that flew to
Jakarta last week from Amsterdam, with a stopover in Kuala
Lumpur, had handed over a bag left by a passenger beneath seat
18A.

"We opened the bag and found 84 capsules of cocaine with a
total value of over Rp 1 billion. We cooperated with the police
to check the plane and in the search for the passenger who sat in
seat 18A," Nofrial said during a press conference in Cengkareng,
Banten province.

He said the authorities had identified the passengers who
occupied seats 18A, 18B and 18C as Sutikno, 42, Servean Jean
Michel, 39, and Yahya Sabira Marisa, 38, respectively. The
authorities are working on the suspicion that one of these
passengers may be the owner of the bag.

Sutikno and Yahya are both Indonesians while Jean Michel is a
French national, Nofrial said.

"We managed to detain Jean Michel not long after the discovery
of the bag. We questioned him for hours before letting him go. We
found no evidence, including fingerprints or traces of cocaine,
linking him to the bag," he said.

Adj. Comr. I Gede Dewa Agung of the Tangerang Police said the
authorities were still trying to locate Sutikno and Yahya.

"We believe they are still in Indonesia ... we are monitoring
every flight leaving the country," he said.

National Narcotics Agency (BNN) chief Comr. Gen. Sutanto, who
also attended the press conference, said leaving drugs under a
plane seat, apparently to be picked up by somebody else, was a
new tactic here.

"We believe somebody else was supposed to pick up the bag. But
because it was found, they just disappeared. It is a new method
to avoid our tight security arrangements," Sutanto said.

According to Law No. 22/1997 on narcotics, anyone found in
possession of at least a kilogram of cocaine can face the death
penalty if convicted.

Earlier, officers from the BNN and airport officials arrested
a foreign national identified as Marcus Aijal, alias Max, and
confiscated 34,801 ecstasy pills from the suspect.

Dozens of drug traffickers, mostly foreign nationals, have
been sentenced to death by the Tangerang District Court in Banten
for smuggling heroin and other drugs into the country.

"We have become one of the main destinations for international
drug syndicates because of our vast market," Sutanto said.