Eight Taiwanese men were yesterday sentenced to death by an Indonesian court after being detained last year with about 1 tonne of crystal methamphetamine.
The men were arrested during raids on a beach west of Jakarta and elsewhere in July last year, when the drug network’s suspected leader was killed in a shoot-out with Indonesian police.
“The defendants have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of colluding and smuggling narcotics,” presiding Judge Haruno Patriadi said as he passed sentence at the South Jakarta District Court.
Photo: AFP
Tipped off by their Taiwanese counterparts, Indonesian police said they discovered about 1,000kg of crystal meth — shipped by boat from China — packed inside about 50 boxes.
The haul was reportedly worth about US$144 million.
Some of the suspects were arrested at Anyer Beach where the drugs were delivered, while others were apprehended in the suspected drug boat near Singaporean waters.
The sentence passed on the men — Liao Kuan-yu (廖冠宇), Chen Wei-chuan (陳威全), Hsu Yung-li (徐勇立), Chuang Chin-sheng (莊金生), Sun Kuo-tai (孫國泰), Sun Chih-feng (孫志峰), Kuo Chun-yuan (郭春源) and Tsai Chih-hung (蔡志鴻) — comes after 11 other Taiwanese drug smugglers were sentenced to death in Indonesia in recent years.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, with sentences including the death penalty for smugglers who carry 5g or more.
Several foreign and Indonesian nationals have been executed by firing squad for drug trafficking, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in 2015, a case that sparked diplomatic outrage and a call to abolish the death penalty.
More Taiwanese are facing drug charges in Indonesia.
Four Taiwanese, including a 69-year-old man, were arrested in February when Indonesian police seized more than 1.4 tonnes of crystal meth hidden rice sacks on a Singapore-flagged ship in Indonesian waters between Sumatra and Singapore.
The National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology yesterday showcased its locally developed variants of the Vision 60 robotic patrol dog, which it plans to deploy on the nation’s outlying territories in the South China Sea. The variants were produced under the Joint Lab project — created by the institute and domestic companies — and assembled with domestically produced motors, lenses and artificial intelligence (AI) systems alongside licensed tech from the US, Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division deputy director Jen Kuo-kang (任國光) told the media event at a military base in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area. Taiwan has built up its strengths
RIGHT DIRECTION: Taiwan’s efforts to prevent forced labor include a proposal to ‘fully prohibit’ employers from withholding workers’ documents, an official said Taiwan is to establish a mechanism to restrict imports of goods linked to forced labor, the Executive Yuan said yesterday, after the US proposed imposing additional tariffs on Taiwanese goods over labor concerns. “The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Economic Affairs are to establish an interministerial review procedure,” Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “The government is to use the Foreign Trade Act [貿易法] as the legal basis to restrict imports of goods produced with forced labor” and bring its supply chain governance more in line with international standards on human rights, resilience
NOT IMMEDIATE: Taiwan has a chance to appeal the proposed 10 percent tariff before it starts, while other countries face a 12.5 percent tariff from the trade office Taiwan is among 60 economies determined by the US to have failed to impose or enforce a ban on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, according to a notice released on Tuesday by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), which proposed imposing an additional 10 percent or more tariff on them. The USTR in a statement said that following an investigation, it had determined under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 that the failure of the 60 economies to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is
TIT-FOR-TAT: The US allegedly revoked the visa of a Chinese national working at Xinhua News Agency in the US in response to Beijing’s expulsion of Vivian Wang The Presidential Office yesterday condemned China for expelling a New York Times correspondent from Beijing following the newspaper’s interview with President William Lai (賴清德), saying the move highlighted Beijing’s suppression of press freedom and its threat to international news media. Taiwan has noted a series of recent incidents in which Beijing used similar tactics to “threaten and pressure international media outlets and journalists,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. “This concerns not only press freedom and freedom of expression, but also the safety of journalists, and Taiwan and relevant partners are paying close attention to the situation,” she
RSS