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)