Military officer arrested for drugs

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 03/17/2011

The National Narcotics Agency said on Thursday that it broke up a drug ring led by a convict at the Salemba penitentiary in East Jakarta and arrested 10 people, including a military officer, for suspected involvement.

The drug ring was controlled by a convict identified as E. from his prison cell via a laptop with an internet connection and a cell phone, Benny Joshua Mamoto, director of the agency’s natural narcotics office, said in Jakarta as quoted by kompas.com.

"We are still investigating whether the warden is implicated in the crime,” he said.

He added that the arrested military officer was a member of the health unit of the Strategic Reserve Command, and allegedly acted as a courier.

Benny said the agency raided a drug factory in Dadap, Tangerang, on Wednesday, which allegedly produced between 300 and 500 pills of ecstasy a day.

The agency later confiscated 12,000 ecstasy pills, 5,000 “happy five” pills and four drug-producing machines from two apartment buildings in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, and Tebet, South Jakarta .