Police arrest African youth on drug charges
Police arrest African youth on drug charges
JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta Police Narcotics Division has
arrested a foreigner charged with heroin trafficking, the head of
the division said yesterday.
The suspect was arrested in a room in Plaza Hotel in the
Mangga Dua area in West Jakarta in a predawn raid on Tuesday, Lt.
Col. Djoko Satrio told The Jakarta Post.
Having managed to escape from detention at police headquarters
on Oct. 1, the suspect went abroad and visited several cities in
Thailand and Malaysia before returning to Jakarta early last week
via Belawan in North Sumatra from Penang, Malaysia, on the
Ekspress Bahagia cruise on Feb. 16.
The suspect obtained a visa from the Indonesian consulate
general's office in Penang a day earlier.
He is now under intensive interrogation at the Jakarta Police
headquarters, Djoko said.
The suspect told police interrogators that he was not the
wanted fugitive who escaped from the jail, although police have
found similarities between him and the wanted suspect, including
skin color, height, voice pattern and facial appearances, Djoko
said. Judging from his accent and voice Djoko has presumed the
man is from an African country.
"I've reported to the city police chief that I am 100 percent
sure that he is the wanted man," said Djoko, who will take up a
new post as the Tangerang Police chief in the next few weeks.
Police said they are having difficulty in finding out the
suspect's real name because he has two passports and a student
card bearing different names and other personal information
including nationality, profession, birthplace and age.
According to Djoko, when arrested on Tuesday, the man claimed
his name was Razak Musah, 27, as written in his Ghanian passport
number A 328386.
Earlier, police named the wanted fugitive as Ibrahim Saebu,
24, holding a Malian passport.
"He's allowed to say anything he wants but we have enough
evidence to name him as the fugitive," Djoko said.
Saebu and his boss, Mustafa Abdul Genewu, who holds a Ghanian
passport, were apprehended by Jakarta Narcotics detectives at
different hotels in Central Jakarta on Sept. 23. They were in
possession of 800 grams of heroin, worth Rp 400 million
(US$175,000) at the time of arrest.
The two suspects were being kept in two different cells at
city police headquarters. Saebu, who was in a cell with three
other prisoners, was reported missing in the early hours of Oct.
1.
At least four jail officers and Saebu's cell mates were
questioned at the time.
Mustafa, 28, will soon go on trial, Djoko said.
Besides rendering a Malian passport when being arrested in
September, the African also showed an International Student
Identity Card number R 9525313 with a picture of him under the
name of Ellias Prince Ben, 28, an American national, studying in
Texas.
When apprehended early this week, he presented a Ghanian
passport issued in Accra on June 23, 1995. In the passport, he is
identified as Razak Musah, a trader.
The pictures in the two ID cards are similar.
"Bruises on his legs and identifying marks on his ears are
similar to those of the wanted African," Djoko said.
"If he is not the fugitive why did he try to escape through
the hotel's ceiling when our officers were about to apprehend
him?" asked Djoko. (bsr)