Probe into envoy dropped

Probe into envoy dropped

AMSTERDAM (AFP): A court here rejected Friday an application for bail made by lawyers for a pilot of Indonesia's Garuda airline, who is suspected of involvement in trafficking the drug ecstasy, legal sources said.

Mohammad Said, 49, was arrested on Sept. 28 last year in possession of some 6,400 tablets of the drug ecstasy, just before he was due to take off from Amsterdam airport on a flight to Bali.

His lawyers had applied for bail on the grounds that his imprisonment was causing psychological suffering to his wife. The court gave no motive for refusing bail.

Earlier Friday Dutch prosecutors dropped an investigation into Indonesian embassy staff believed implicated in the affair for lack of evidence.

Jakarta had accused the Dutch authorities of trying to politicize the case by implicating embassy personnel.

Dutch officials denied that the foreign ministry had put pressure on prosecutors in the case to avoid harming diplomatic relations with the country's former colony.