BIG BUST: Liang Qianjun (squatting, right) and Ou Yongdiang (left) bow their heads during a press conference at Jakarta Police Headquarters on Thursday after their arrest for trafficking 200 kilograms of crystal methampethamine. (JP/Chrysanthi Tarigan)
Police seize 200 kg of crystal meth
In what is believed to be the second-largest haul in the history of the country’s war on drugs, the Jakarta Police confiscated 200 kilograms of crystal methampethamine from an apartment in North Jakarta in the early hours of Thursday.
Chinese suspects worked for international drug syndicate: Police
JAKARTA (AFP): Two Chinese men arrested in Indonesia accused of possessing crystal methamphetamine worth more than US$40 million worked for an international drug syndicate based in Hong Kong, police said Friday.
Jakarta anti-narcotics police chief Sr. Comr. Carlo Tewu said the pair, nabbed in the capital on Wednesday, were “bodyguards” for the 220 kilograms of drugs and had negotiated with two local distributors.
A police statement named the two as Lian Qian Jun and Ou Yong Diang and said they were arrested outside a hotel near Jakarta’s international airport as they were preparing to leave for Singapore.
“They were bodyguards for the drugs, which were brought from Hong Kong to be distributed in Indonesia,” Tewu told AFP, who put the street value of the drugs at around Rp 396 billion ($42.4 million).
Prior to their arrest, the two had started negotiations with two Indonesian men who were working as middlemen for a major crystal methamphetamine distributor in the country, Tewu said.
Tewu said one of the two Indonesians had died after jumping from a Jakarta apartment tower while trying to avoid police arrest, but he did not give more details. Indonesian authorities are stepping up their crackdown on drug producers, smugglers, traffickers and users, with courts increasingly handing down stiff punishment for drug offenses. (***)