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BATAM, Indonesia \u2013 Indonesian authorities have seized 1.3 tonnes of ketamine worth tens of millions of dollars from a foreign-flagged vessel, a top anti-drug official said on Aug 9, in one of the country\u2019s largest drug busts.<\/p>\n
The authorities received intelligence in February that the MV King Sun was sailing east from Thailand towards Indonesia with \u201csuspicious\u201d cargo, prompting months of surveillance, National Narcotics Agency chief Suyudi Ario Seto said.<\/p>\n
A navy warship intercepted the vessel on Aug 6 as it entered Indonesian territory, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Aug 7, the joint team found 65 sacks hidden inside the ship. After testing, the items were known to contain ketamine,\u201d Suyudi told a news conference in Batam on Aug 9.<\/p>\n
The load of an estimated 1.3 tonnes was worth around 2.07 trillion rupiah (S$149 million), he said. Authorities were still searching the boat to see if there was more.<\/p>\n
Ketamine functions primarily as a fast-acting anaesthetic, but it is widely abused as an illicit party drug. Its distribution is tightly controlled and monitored in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
State news agency Antara reported that the vessel was registered under a Tanzanian flag and that it was intercepted in waters around the Riau Islands province near Singapore.<\/p>\n
Eight crew members aboard the vessel \u2013 seven Myanmar nationals and a Taiwanese \u2013 have been detained, the narcotics agency said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are still investigating with regard to the origin of the load, port destination, who the sender and the receiver were,\u201d Suyudi said.<\/p>\n
Indonesian authorities seized 3.37 tonnes of cannabis buds in July when they foiled a smuggling attempt from Thailand, arresting 12 suspects.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Indonesian police busted a smuggling ring that moved 2.5 tonnes of methamphetamine into the country from Afghanistan, with 17 suspects arrested.<\/p>\n
Indonesia has the death penalty for traffickers, but it has maintained a moratorium on executions for several years. AFP<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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BATAM, Indonesia \u2013 Indonesian authorities have seized 1.3 tonnes of ketamine worth tens of millions of dollars from a foreign-flagged vessel, a top anti-drug official…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}