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.