Indonesian police bust meth ship bound for Australia

Indonesian police have intercepted 120kg of crystal methamphetamine bound for Australia and stashed in the machinery of a 40m cargo ship near Batam on the country’s maritime border with Singapore.

Methylamphetamine. Picture: Getty Images

Indonesian police have intercepted 120kg of crystal methamphetamine bound for Australia and stashed in the machinery of a 40m cargo ship near Batam on the country’s maritime border with Singapore.

A spokesman for the country’s National Narcotics Agency (BNN) said the boat had been ­intercepted on Sunday night after being tracked from Malaysia, and three men of Indian origin taken into custody.

“There were 106 packets of meth, with more than 1kg in each packet,” BNN brigadier general Sulistyo Pudjo Hartono said.

“The three people on board said they were going to Brisbane, Australia. They spoke very good English and had been staying in Singapore for some time but do not have Singapore citizenship.”

The shipment would have a conservative estimated street value of more than $50m in Australia where users pay among the world’s highest prices for crystal meth, or ice.

General Pudjo hailed the bust as a symbol of Indonesia’s commitment to help Australia prevent transnational crime from reaching its borders. “Even though the goods were just passing through, we didn’t turn a blind eye. We captured them in Indonesian waters,” he said.

The drug intercept comes as Jakarta continues to lobby for the extradition of Australian Gregor Haas, father of Brisbane Broncos star Payne Haas, from The Philippines where he was ­arrested in May on an Interpol Red Notice for suspected involvement in a shipment of crystal meth to Indonesia allegedly linked to Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa drug cartel.

Indonesia’s Tempo magazine reported this week that local authorities believed Australia was trying to “hinder” the extradition process for fear Mr Haas could face the death penalty if convicted of the offence in an ­Indonesian court, and that Australia’s concerns were “conveyed when a delegation of the Australian Federal Police visited BNN” recently.

General Pudjo confirmed the “delicate topic” of Mr Haas’s case was raised during a meeting ­between AFP chief Reece Kershaw and BNN commander Marthinus Hukom last month.

“We help Australia with people-smuggling and many things. We are the last bastion. We help Australia with so many crime threats from the north,” he said.

“We have a very good relationship with Australia. (Haas) is a very tiny matter in a good relationship between neighbours.”

Former AFP transnational crime expert John Coyne, now head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s strategic policing and law enforcement unit, said it was “unusual for bulk imports from ­Malaysia or the Mekong to go via Indonesia to Australia by boat” and the intercept suggested drug smugglers were experimenting with new routes.

“The wholesale price over the last five to eight years of crystal meth out of the Mekong region has been dropping drastically so (smugglers) can afford to lose a lot more because of the profit levels, especially heading into Australia where you have globally high prices and an almost insatiable demand,” he said.

Australians are some of the world’s largest per capita users of the drug. The latest National Wastewater Drug Monitoring report based on testing of wastewater from around the country in December found evidence of record high meth consumption in capital cities and regional areas despite large seizures of the drug.

Additional reporting: Dian Septiari