Within two weeks of its last major bust, Ngurah Rai International Airport’s customs and excise office arrested another Iranian citizen on charges of trafficking illegal drugs into Bali.
The 34-year old suspect, identified as Shahbazi Saeid, arrived at the Bali airport on Monday night at 8 p.m. flying from Doha in Qatar to Denpasar via Kuala Lumpur on board Qatar Airways.
The Iranian national was found trafficking drugs by swallowing capsules of crystal methamphetamine, totalling around 200 grams.
Two weeks ago, seven Iranians were caught upon arrival in Bali smuggling 4.5 kilograms of chrystal meth, which they had swallowed.
The seven Iranian citizens could face the death penalty for violating the anti-narcotic law.
“[Saeid] used a similar operation mode to the previous seven Iranian men,” explained Faried Silby Barcea, head of the Bali and Nusa Tenggara customs and excise office.
Officials said Saeid looked panicked when approaching the immigration booth at the airport. The immigration offier immediately noticed his frightened face and took him to the examination room and later to the Bali International Medical Center.
Doctors at the center scanned his stomach and found several small plastic bags, which looked like capsules.
After undergoing a CT Scan and X-Ray process, the medical staff found 22 capsules containing crystal methamphetamine. “In addition to Saeid, the officials also examined seven other Iranian passengers in the same flights. But they were [proven] clean,” Barcea said.
Bambang Wahyudi from the Ngurah Rai airport office admitted that the airport has not yet acquired body scanning equipment to detect any substances of narcotic materials inside a passenger’s body.
“Such equipment is badly needed. Bali has become a soft target for illegal drugs traffickers,” Wahyudi said.
The National Narcotics Body has promised to equip Bali’s international terminal with the equipment in 2010.
Sr. Com. Kokot Indarto, head of Bali Police narcotics department, confirmed the Iranian drug traffickers were part of an organised transnational criminal gang.
“We have to promptly anticipate such an increasing transnational crime involving foreign citizens,” Indarto said.
Police said international drug smugglers had apparently changed tactics and were now using Iranians to smuggle drugs into Indonesia instead of Africans.
Earlier this month, police arrested two Iranians in Jakarta for the alleged possession and sale of methamphetamine.
On Nov. 3, East Java Police and customs and excise officers arrested four Iranian citizens in separate places for alleged drug smuggling.
Two of them were arrested upon their arrival at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, while the other two were rounded up at Tunjungan Plaza and Inna Simpang Hotel in Surabaya. The suspects had been using the new method of smuggling meth into the country by soaking towels and bathrobes in the liquid form of the drug.
The seized drugs had an estimated street value of Rp 7.5 billion, according to the local police.
On Oct. 19 and 20, customs officials at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport arrested eight women and two men from Iran for allegedly smuggling more than Rp 100 billion worth of meth into the country.
