Joint team foils effort to smuggle 2.6 tonnes of liquid ‘sabu’ off Bengkalis
Officers from the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), the Customs and Excise Directorate General and the Riau Islands Police intercepted the shipment on Monday at about 8:15 p.m. based on an intelligence information.
Officer teams from three Indonesian agencies thwarted a plan to smuggle nearly 3 metric tons of methamphetamine, known locally as "sabu," off the coast of Bengkalis, Riau province, on Monday evening, according to an intelligence tip-off. Joint authorities from the National Narcotics Agency, the Customs and Excise Directorate General, and the Riau Islands Police intercepted a vessel at around 8:15 p.m. off Tanjung Parit waters, off the coast of the regency, after receiving intel about a drug shipment originating from Malaysia's Sarawak state and traveling across the Andaman Sea.
Brig. Gen. Roy Hardi Siahaan, the BNN enforcement and pursuit director, revealed that a coordinated operation involving all three agencies was initiated based on the tip-off. The intercepted ship was towed to the Customs and Excise Operational Base in Tanjung Balai Karimun. The narcotics network attempted to avoid detection by falsifying the vessel's identity, renaming it from MV Rain Maker to MV Ocean Porter and flying the Tanzanian flag.
Upon reaching the Tanjung Balai Karimun base, the team deployed two Customs K-9 dogs and detection devices like backscatter scanners, TruNarc, and narkotest to thoroughly search the ship.
Written by urgent.news from The Jakarta Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
