Police recapture drug suspects

JAKARTA: Police recaptured on Thursday three suspects released previously by the Tangerang District Court, which concluded in a pretrial hearing that their case files did not contain enough information to continue trial.

Head of the drugs and addictive substances unit of the city police narcotics division, Comr. Mulyadi, said police were sure that they did not make any mistakes in the arrest, saying that the defendants themselves wrote down their names and signed the files.

The three defendants, Zimbabwean Kholison Nkomo and Nigerians Michael Titus Igweh and Hillary K. Chimezie, were being tried at the district court for possessing a total of 5.6 kilograms of heroin.

However, a panel of judges presided over by Judge Permadi decided on Tuesday to clear all charges against the defendants and declared them free, as the trial could not proceed due to inaccurate data in their dossiers.

Local residents, who helped the police in arresting the defendants in a housing complex in Serpong, staged a rally on Wednesday to protest the court's decision to free the defendants.

Mulyadi also said the defendants had been caught red-handed with the evidence. As they carried no passports upon their arrest in a house in Serpong, the police had asked them to write down their names.

"So it's impossible that we had captured the wrong people," he said. --JP