SUMATRA: The North Sumatra Police have stated that the distribution of Acehnese marijuana has reached farther across the archipelago and has also spread to neighboring Malaysia.
The provincial police chief, Insp. Gen. Eko Hadi Sutedjo, said in Medan here the other day that marijuana trafficking from Aceh to Malaysia had been going for a long time through small ports along the province’s coast.
Eko said the contraband was transported overland from Aceh to North Sumatra before being transferred to boats at small ports in Belawan, Medan and Tanjung Balai.
“The Royal Malaysian Police told us that ganja smuggling was getting out of hand. They want us to stop it,” Eko said.
The police chief said the provincial police had agreed with its neighboring counterpart to cooperate in eradicating drug distribution in their respective areas, especially at seaports and airports often used as transfer points.
Eko said North Sumatra had been used by drug lords as a gateway to send Acehnese ganja to areas around Indonesia and Malaysia.
The provincial police, the prosecutor’s office and the local government plan to meet their counterparts in Aceh to discuss the widespread contraband trafficking.
Eko said one of the targets was to set up a joint task force to eradicate drug networks effectively.
“I have not seen a tough system to eradicate ganja in Aceh. We keep arresting people transporting ganja from Aceh,” the police chief said, bemoaning a lack of personnel to monitor the North Sumatra and Aceh border.
North Sumatra recently foiled an attempt to transport 4.2 tons of marijuana from Aceh in Medan. “The ganja made it through the provincial border under our noses, but thankfully we received information from the public in time,” Eko said.
Medan Police narcotics unit chief Comr. Dony Alexander said separately that the police had detained four people and seized the 4.2 tons of marijuana worth Rp 10.5 billion (US$839,530). The suspects said the dried drug was to be distributed in Lampung, Jakarta, East Java, Kalimantan and Bali.
“We are still pursuing the main suspect, identified as Z, who funded and was to distribute the contraband, He is from Aceh,” Dony said.
The trafficking attempt was foiled on Jan. 17, when the police stopped a truck containing 96 sacks of neatly packed ganja on the Medan-Binjai highway.
Mursal, one of the suspects, said he was to take the contraband overland from Aceh to Lampung and was paid Rp 1.5 million in advance for the job. He was promised another Rp 7 million once he delivered the ganja in Lampung.
It is one of the country’s largest busts. The largest occurred in October last year when the police in Riau foiled an attempt to transport 8 tons of marijuana from Aceh to Jakarta. Four people were arrested in the case.
