Said to be tried in Netherlands, says RI diplomat

Said to be tried in Netherlands, says RI diplomat

By K. Basrie

THE HAGUE (JP): Mohamad Said, the Garuda Indonesia pilot
suspected of attempting to smuggle 8,000 Ecstasy pills out of
Schiphol airport, will be tried soon in the Netherlands,
according to an Indonesian diplomat.

Information officer at the Indonesian embassy here Suhartono
Hadikusumo told The Jakarta Post Wednesday the pilot was
currently being detained at a prison in Haarlem, waiting for
prosecutors to complete the dossiers on him.

No specific date has been set by the local authorities for the
trial, however. Citing local regulations, Suhartono said Mohamad
Said could be detained at the Haarlem jail for the next two
months and tried in January.

"But I'd like to say that he will be tried soon," said the
senior diplomat without giving further details.

An uproar over where the trial was to be held broke soon after
the 49-year-old pilot was apprehended Sept. 29. Some Indonesian
officials demanded that Said be returned to stand trial in
Jakarta, citing that Indonesian laws permit an Indonesian court
to try Indonesians for crimes committed overseas.

Dutch Ambassador to Indonesia Paul Reitze Brouwer, however,
made clear early last month that Holland would not extradite Said
because it did not have any extradition treaty with Indonesia. He
cited several grounds for holding the trial in the Netherlands,
including the fact that distributing and possessing Ecstasy pills
is a crime in the Netherlands, and because the crime happened in
The Hague.

The old-fashioned Haarlem prison building with a huge dome is
surrounded by residential houses and offices and easily noticed
by passers-by due to its height and eye-catching exterior design.

Suhartono said he had no idea whether the prosecutors had
named other Indonesians to testify as witnesses in the case.

According to de Telegraaf newspaper here, the Indonesian
senior pilot told police investigators shortly after he was
arrested that the drugs found in his possession were meant for a
relative of a high-ranking officer in Jakarta.

The daily said in its report on Oct. 8 that Said's dossiers,
completed by CID Inspector D. van Teijlingen, also mentioned the
alleged involvement of a secretary of the trade attache at the
Indonesian embassy here in a drug-trafficking syndicate.

Jakarta responded to the report by instructing National Police
Chief Lt. Gen. Dibyo Widodo to cut short his European tour and
skip a planned meeting with his counterpart in the Netherlands.

The Indonesian embassy, Suhartono said, has maintained a low
profile in relation to the daily's report.

Asked whether the embassy considered filing a lawsuit,
Suhartono said: "It's useless, it would only lead us into further
serious polemics which, in turn, would only wreck the two
countries' relations."

The embassy has tried twice to deny the report but the paper
apparently refused to publish its protest, he said.

"In response to a letter dated Oct. 23 from the daily's
reporter, we sent our comments and in-depth explanation via fax
on Oct. 25. None of it has been printed in the paper, thus far,"
he said.

Suhartono insisted that the embassy's investigation found no
proof of staff involvement in any crimes, including drug
trafficking.

"Thus, nobody has been suspended or fired," he said.

In a related development, former police chief Gen. (ret)
Awaloedin Djamin, who is in the Netherlands on a personal visit,
said he was confused by the uproar over the arrest.

"I still cannot understand why newspapers in Indonesia and the
Netherlands are making such a big deal of the arrest," he told
the Post in Amsterdam.

"The arrest of a drug trafficker is not big news and the
treatment of such a criminal is normal to any police around the
world," said Awaloedin, who is now an advisor to the police
force.

He urged that the authorities, instead, prevent the
establishment of easy-to-build Ecstasy factories in Indonesia.

According to Awaloedin, who paid a visit to the chief of the
Netherlands police, Gen. de Wijs, Wednesday, the Dutch police
have learned how easy it is to produce Ecstasy pills.

"The substance is easy to get and with a small van and a
number of tools, one could produce the pills and sell them at
high prices," he said.