JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesian authorities seized about two tons of methamphetamine off Sumatra island in the biggest seizure of drugs in the country’s history, its narcotics agency said on Monday.
The agency linked the drugs to a syndicate in the Golden Triangle – an area where northeastern Myanmar meets parts of Thailand and Laos, which has a long history of producing drugs for distribution as far as Japan and New Zealand.
Marthinus Hukom, chief of Indonesia’s narcotics agency, told reporters that after five months of surveillance authorities last week sent ships to stop a vessel called “Sea Dragon Tarawa” and discovered the methamphetamine in boxes.
Hukom said the drugs were thought to have come from a syndicate in the Golden Triangle and were destined for Indonesia as well as other Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and the Philippines.
Four Indonesians and two Thai nationals were apprehended on the ship, he said.
“This seizure is the biggest drug discovery in the history of drug eradication in Indonesia,” he said.
The latest seizure comes after Indonesia’s navy seized a ship carrying nearly two tons of methamphetamine and cocaine worth $425 million around the same area in the west of the archipelago earlier this month. One Thai national and four Myanmar nationals were also detained.
A record 190 tons of methamphetamine was seized in East and Southeast Asia in 2023 as organised crime groups exploited weak law enforcement to traffic drugs, mainly via the Gulf of Thailand, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in a 2024 report.
Indonesia has some of the world’s strictest anti-narcotics laws and drug trafficking is punishable by death.
(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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