Indonesia seizes ship carrying methamphetamine, cocaine worth $426m

Indonesia's navy seized a ship carrying nearly two tonnes of methamphetamine and cocaine worth almost $426m (R7.69bn) off Sumatra this week and arrested a Thai national and four Myanmar nationals aboard the vessel, the navy said on Friday.

Officers apprehended the ship after it turned off its lights and increased its speed to try to flee Indonesian waters in the Tanjung Balai Karimun region of Riau Islands province, the navy said.

Officers seized nearly 100 yellow and white sacks holding about 1.2 tonnes of cocaine and 705kg of methamphetamine worth$425.92m, a navy spokesperson said.

Indonesia has among the world's strictest anti-narcotics laws and drug trafficking is punishable by death.

The navy said the ship, bearing a Thai flag, was taken to a navy base in Tanjung Balai Karimun. It did not give details of the crew members' origins apart from their nationalities.

Officials are still investigating where the drugs came from and where the ship was headed, navy official Fauzi, who goes by one name, said in a press conference.

The seizure is among the largest busts in the country.

A record 190 tonnes of methamphetamine were seized in East and Southeast Asia in 2023 as organised crime groups exploited weak law enforcement to traffic the drugs, mainly via the Gulf of Thailand, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a 2024 report.

The Golden Triangle — an area of northeast Myanmar that meets parts of Thailand and Laos — has a long history of producing drugs, mainly used by Asian crime syndicates which distribute the narcotics as far as Japan and New Zealand.

In 2022, 179kg of cocaine were found in waters near the port of Merak on Java island, at the time the largest cocaine seizure in the country, the UN drug agency said in a 2023 global report on cocaine.

Reuters