Police hunt for second ecstasy lab

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Jakarta Police are investigating the possible existence of another ecstasy laboratory following a raid on a large ecstasy factory over the weekend at a shop-house in Cengkareng, West Jakarta, that netted a record drug haul.

"We just found out that a vital piece of equipment, the ecstasy pill processor, was not among the evidence collected in the search at the Cengkareng facility," city police psychotropic division chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Anjan P. Putra told the press on Tuesday.

"We strongly believe there is another lab that operates the pill processor," he said, adding that a suspect was placed on the wanted list.

Police raided an ecstasy factory on Friday and found equipment to make ecstasy pills and shabu-shabu (crystal methamphetamine). They also confiscated 74,570 ecstasy pills from the factory and arrested two men, Sastra Wijaya and Yuda, alias Akang, who ran the facility.

A further search found 7,500 ecstasy pills at Sastra's house.

Officers spent days tailing Sastra, a taxi driver, who was placed under surveillance after he was observed meeting with Burhan Tahar, a known drug trafficker and police target.

The surveillance team learned that Sastra went out every morning with his taxi, but got friends to drive his shift as he rode around the city on a motorcycle.

Sastra met with Burhan to purchase some chemicals from the shop-house, in which police discovered the drug factory during Friday's raid.

Police suspect that Burhan owns the ecstasy factory, but he was not on the premises when the police raided it.

Anjan said the police received a tip that Burhan had fled to Medan, North Sumatra, two days before the raid.

Burhan was arrested in 1998 for drug dealing, but received a very lenient sentence of only four months' imprisonment.

"We suspect he has close ties with Ang Kiem Soei, the former boss of a Jakarta drug syndicate boss," Anjan said.

Ang was arrested in 2002 for operating an ecstasy lab, thought to be the biggest in the country with a daily production volume of 150,000 pills.

He was sentenced to death in January 2003 by the Tangerang District Court. His sentence was strengthened by the Supreme Court in October 2003.