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)