JAKARTA: The Bengkalis District Court in Riau has sentenced an East Java man to death after finding him guilty of attempting to smuggle nearly 40 kilogrammes of methamphetamine from Malaysia.
During a court hearing on Wednesday (Dec 17), presiding judge Manata Binsar Tua Samosir stated that the defendant, Mochammad Hery, violated Article 114 of the 2009 Narcotics Law, which regulates drug trafficking involving more than five grams of narcotics.
“The defendant acted with careful and systematic planning and was linked to an international drug syndicate. The sheer quantity of narcotics involved posed a serious threat to public safety,” Manata said in the verdict. He added that the court found no mitigating factors throughout the trial.
“Therefore, the court sentences the defendant to the maximum penalty, which is death,” the judge concluded.
Head of the Intelligence Division at the Bengkalis Prosecutor’s Office, Wahyu Ibrahim, said the court’s ruling was in line with the sentence sought by prosecutors.
“The prosecution demanded the death penalty because of the massive potential impact on the public had the defendant not been apprehended. This was not small-scale drug dealing, but the trafficking of dozens of kilograms of narcotics. That is why we sought the maximum sentence,” Wahyu said.
He added that the verdict has not yet become legally binding, as the defendant still has the right to file an appeal with a higher court within seven days. Hery was arrested by Bengkalis police in the early hours of April 18 while riding a speedboat in waters off Bengkalis.
On board the vessel, officers discovered dozens of packets of methamphetamine weighing a total of 39.6kg, concealed inside two duffel bags.
Investigators later revealed that Hery had been recruited as a courier for an international drug syndicate in January by a man identified as Boim and another individual known only as BOS, who remains at large. In March, BOS transferred Rp10.3 million to Hery to cover the cost of obtaining a passport.
A month later, Hery received an additional Rp32 million to prepare for a trip to Malaysia. Hery travelled to Malaysia on April 3 and stayed at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where he was given RM70,000 to purchase a car. He was then instructed to collect a bag containing methamphetamine from a sedan parked near the hotel.
He subsequently transported the drugs to Muar, Malaysia, where he met another individual identified only as WAK. The two then attempted to transport the narcotics by speedboat to Bengkalis, Riau. Authorities managed to intercept the vessel, but WAK escaped by jumping into the sea and remains at large.
The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) has previously reported that the Indonesia-Malaysia border has thousands of informal crossing points, making it difficult for authorities to effectively monitor illicit activities.
Drug traffickers commonly use overland routes across Borneo Island, while maritime routes are frequently exploited to transport narcotics from Malaysia to Sumatra. Indonesia has some of the strictest drug laws in the world, with courts often imposing the death penalty on both local and foreign drug traffickers.
Although Indonesia has not carried out any executions since 2016, courts continue to hand down new death sentences each year.
According to a 2024 report by human rights group Amnesty International on death sentences and executions, Indonesian courts sentenced 85 people to death last year, 64 of them for drug-related offences.
That figure places Indonesia among South-East Asian countries issuing the highest number of new death sentences in 2024, ranking below Vietnam, which recorded more than 150 death sentences, and Thailand with 115. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
