INDONESIA: JAKARTA INMATE SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR RUNNING ECSTASY RING FROM JAIL

July 15, 2013: A convicted drug trafficker found guilty of organizing the shipment of some four tons of Ecstasy from China while behind bars was sentenced to death by the West Jakarta District Court.
Convict Freddy Budiman arranged the delivery of 1.4 million pills from his Cipinang Penitentiary prison cell in May, 2012. The drugs, which were sent from Shenzhen, China, were concealed in a shipping container registered as carrying fish tanks and successfully passed through security checks at North Jakarta’s Tanjung Priok port. The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) raided the truck in Cengkareng, West Jakarta, shortly after it left the port, discovering the shipment.
Freddy later admitted to organizing the shipment, but told investigators that he only asked for 500,000 Ecstasy pills. The order was apparently more than doubled because the manufacturer thought Freddy had reliable connections with Indonesian drug markets and nightclubs.
He used connections at Cipinang Penitentiary to make the order and sneak the container past Tanjung Priok security Chief Judge Aswandi said.
“The defendant paid Rp 90 million [$8,900] for the container service,” Aswandi said, according to the Indonesian news portal Tempo.co. “The defendant admitted to earning 10 percent [of the sales] as profit if he got to sell the extra narcotics.”
Freddy, who was already behind bars on drug smuggling charges stemming from a bust in Sumatra, was charged with trafficking under Indonesia’s harsh anti-narcotics laws.
He was sentenced to death after judges found no mitigating factors, stating that Freddy continued to sell drugs from prison, “where he should have regretted his wrongdoings,” instead.
“The defendant has been proven guilty of purchasing and trading more than 5 grams of Category I narcotics,” Aswandi said. “[We hereby] hand down the death penalty to Freddy Budiman.”
Freddy said he was deciding whether to appeal the sentence. (Sources: Jakarta Globe, 15/07/2013)