Malawian on trial for drugs

TANGERANG: A court on Wednesday began the trial of a Malawi national accused of smuggling a kilogram of heroin into the country from Thailand with his Indonesian girlfriend in June 2001.

Reading the indictment at the Tangerang District Court, prosecutor H.P. Hutagaol said the defendant Adam Wilson, 30, a resident of Malawi Benin, Africa, asked his girlfriend Edith Yunita Sianturi to deliver money to a man called Brother in Bangkok on May 26.

She gave US$4,700 to Brother, who remains at large, at a hotel in Bangkok. The day of her return to Jakarta on June 4, Brother gave her a handbag to give to Wilson.

Suspicious immigration officers at Soekarno Hatta Airport checked the bulky handbag and found three plastic bags of heroin in its lining.

The Tangerang court sentenced Sianturi to death late in 2001 while Wilson was still at large. She remains in prison.

The police arrested Wilson at his rented house in Duren Sawit, East Jakarta, in May.

He is charged under Article 82 of Law No. 22/1997 on drugs, which carries a maximum sentence of the death penalty.

Presiding judge Maha Nikmah adjourned the trial until next week, when the defense would be heard. -- JP