Thai charged with heroin deal pleads not guilty

Thai charged with heroin deal pleads not guilty

JAKARTA (JP): The lawyer of Sae Lim Iaw, a Thai national
being tried for drug trafficking in the Central Jakarta District
Court, yesterday asked the judge to dismiss the charges against
his client.

"I ask the honorable judge to free Sae Lim Iaw, also known
as Boon Tan, from all charges because he was merely a translator
who worked for the drug sellers Freddy A Ting and Tham Tuck Yin,"
lawyer Sjofril Manan said. Sjofril was engaged by Boon Tan eight
days ago to replace his previous defense team.

In the previous trial session, last month, prosecutor Meity
Yosef asked Judge R.P. Mangkudiningrat to punish Boon Tan with
the death sentence for his alleged involvement in trafficking 29
kilograms of heroin.

Sjofril said that Boon Tan neither owned the heroin nor
brought it into Indonesia. The lawyer also said his client had
become involved in the scheme only after meeting Freddy and Tham
Tuck Yin.

Sjofril said the real owner of the heroin is a man named
Thamanoon Saepho, who is still at large

The lawyer said in his defense statement that Boon Tan had
visited Indonesia on six occasions to survey the coconut and sea
food businesses here. On his third visit, in January last year,
he had been accompanied by Thamanoon Saepho, his business
partner.

Lawyer Sjofril said that on his fifth visit to the country,
which was for the same purpose, Boon Tan met Tham Tuck Yin, one
of Thamanoon Saepho's assistants.

During his sixth visit, Thamanoon Saepho asked him to act as
translator for Tham in a business meeting at Hotel Indonesia on
May 11, 1994.

The man was A Hong who, according to the Merdeka daily,
turned out to be an undercover Interpol officer.

Boon Tan went to the hotel with Tham and Freddy and held a
meeting with A Hong in room 433.

According to the prosecutor's statement, the discussion
occurred between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., during which time A Hong
tested the quality of the heroin by putting a little scoop of the
drug into a glass of water.

Prosecutors Meity Yosef and Suriansyah have stated that Boon
Tan knew what was transpiring and was involved in the heroin
transaction since he was the translator during the negotiations.

However, lawyer Sjofril said that Boon Tan should not be
held to have been involved in the deal because he had simply
complied with Thamanoon Saepho's request that be the translator
in a business transaction that he knew nothing about.

"He was not involved in this case because he was not the
owner of the heroin and he was not the one who brought it into
the country. He was merely a paid translator who also wanted to
do coconut and seafood business in this country," Sjofril
reiterated.

The heroin was allegedly brought into the country in
January, 1994 from Thailand via Medan, North Sumatra, by Than
Tuck Yin, also known as A Tjai, a Malaysian. He said Thamanoon
Saepho, a Thai, had ordered him to transport the heroin.

A Tjai brought the heroin to Jakarta from Medan by bus. He
later took the heroin to Freddy's house at Jl. Patriot 29 in
Bekasi. It was kept there until May 11, 1994, when A Tjai, Boon
Tan and Freddy carried three of the 60 packages of high-grade
heroin to Hotel Indonesia to show it to A Hong. It was there, on
the same day, that police seized the drugs and arrested the three
men.

The remaining 57 packages of heroin were subsequently
discovered at Freddy's house.

The drug raid was the biggest heroin bust in Indonesian
history. The second largest drug haul was recorded seven years
earlier in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, when the police seized
17.7 kilograms of heroin of a similar grade.

Meity Yosef, the prosecutor in Boon Tan's trial, and R.A.
Argasasmita, who is prosecuting A Tjai, requested that the judge
punish the two defendants with death sentences last month. (mas)