Arrested Kingpin Captain Bram planned new wave of asylum boats

The Indonesian people-smuggling kingpin arrested last week was poised to drum up more business.

Abraham Louhenapessy, left, is escorted back to jail in Merak, Banten province in 2010.

The Indonesian people-smuggler behind last year’s cash-for-turn-back affair was poised to drum up more business — with plane tickets booked to six known asylum-seeker collection points — when he was arrested on Friday in Jakarta in a joint operation with Australian police, Indonesian officials said yesterday.

It is the third time in less than a decade the smuggler, believed to have been operating since 1999, has been arrested by Indonesian authorities and his latest detention has been lauded by Australian Federal Police and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

Abraham Louhenapessy, aka Captain Bram, is most recently known for having organised the departure of a boat carrying mostly Sri Lankan asylum-seekers from Indonesia in April that Australian border protection authorities are said to have intercepted and turned back to Indonesia after paying the crew $5000 each.

He was also responsible for the boat involved in a seven-month stand-off with Indonesian authorities in late 2009, when more than 250 mostly Tamil Sri Lankans refused to disembark after they were intercepted just five hours from Christmas Island by Indonesian authorities, at Canberra’s request, and shepherded towards the west Java coast.

But he has been operating since at least 1999, and by 2010 was said to have already arranged the passage of more than 1500 asylum-seekers to Australia.

Indonesian National Police spokesman Agus Rianto said yesterday Captain Bram’s arrest in a west Jakarta suburb about 2am on Friday was the culmination of a months-long joint investigation with the East Nusa Tengarra provincial police, and in “close communication” with the AFP.

While policies preventing the resettlement of asylum-seekers in Australia has done much to reduce the number of boats leaving Indonesia, evidence collected from his house suggest the 56-year-old Indonesian was still very much in the people-smuggling business.

“We confiscated a number of evidence including plane tickets from Jakarta to Thailand, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, France, Abu Dhabi and back to Jakarta. We also confiscated four hand phones, sailing licences, driver’s licence, ATM cards, all of them listed under the fugitive’s name,” General Rianto said.

Police in Jakarta were questioning Captain Bram yesterday over the purpose of his upcoming trip and whether he was in the process of planning more asylum boats, though all six destinations on his travel itinerary are known to host large numbers of asylum-seekers or internally displaced people.

Though this is his third arrest, the veteran people smuggler and boat captain has spent a total of just 20 months in jail because Indonesian authorities did not pass laws criminalising people-smuggling until 2011.

The AFP and Mr Dutton yesterday hailed the arrest.