Plane passenger suspected in 1 kg 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, Jean Michel Servean, 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.