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.
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