Police recapture drug suspects

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