BANDUNG – Indonesia has handed death sentences to a gang of more than a dozen drug traffickers, including an Iranian couple, the prosecutor’s office said.
A total of 13 suspects – three Iranians, a Pakistani and nine Indonesians – were ordered to be executed by firing squad for the gang’s role in smuggling about 400kg of methamphetamine, according to authorities.
The ruling was delivered by video link in West Java’s Sukabumi – where members of the drugs ring were caught last June – due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Sukabumi prosecutors’ office head Bambang Yunianto said Iranian Hossein Salari Rashid led the smuggling plot.
“There are four foreigners in the group, including the mastermind of the crime. He (Hossein) was sentenced together with his wife.”
Yesterday’s ruling was a record for the number of drug traffickers sentenced to death at one time in Indonesia, Amnesty International said.
The rights group said it brought to 30 the number of people given the death penalty in the Southeast Asian nation this year, including several foreigners.
It added that most were drug trafficking cases.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, but has held off conducting executions for several years.
In 2019, a French drug trafficker, briefly on death row, saw his sentence reduced to a long prison term on appeal.
A year earlier, eight Taiwanese smugglers were sentenced to death after being caught with around a tonne of crystal meth.
In 2015, several foreign traffickers have been executed by firing squad, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, a case that sparked diplomatic outrage and a call to abolish the death penalty.
The pair were the accused ringleaders of the so-called Bali Nine heroin smuggling gang. – AFP, April 7, 2021
