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RI to extradite Singaporean to US
The Batam District Court has acted on the governmentâs request to extradite Singaporean Lim Yong Nam to the US
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The Batam District Court has acted on the government's request to extradite Singaporean Lim Yong Nam to the US.
At the hearing in Batam on Wednesday, presiding judge Cahyono said that despite the absence of an extradition agreement between Indonesia and the US, the court decided to accept the extradition request, mainly because of the US' good cooperation on the arrests of Indonesian fugitives such as Zarimah and David Nusawijaya in the past.
'[The judges] wholly accepted the extradition request filed by prosecutors and the government and ordered the detention of Lim Young Nam until he is extradited,' he said.
He said that the Singaporean High Court's decision to acquit Lim of the American charges did not invalidate the Batam hearing on the principle of ne bis in idem, the equivalent of double jeopardy. He said that the Lim case also did not fall into the res judicata (a matter already judged) category as he was not being prosecuted for the same case as in Singapore.
'This court processed only the case of Lim's extradition to the US; it did not hear the charges laid by the American prosecutors against him,' he said.
Lim said he would send a letter to President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, appealing to him to not comply with the court's verdict.
Zevrijn Boy Kanu, the lawyer representing Lim at the trial, said that his client's fate would be in the hands of the President.
'We accept the court's verdict because we have no other recourse. That is why we have decided to send a letter to the President, appealing to him not to extradite [Lim] to US,' he said.
Lim is one of four Singapore citizens who have been accused of smuggling American radio components for use as bomb hardware to Iran from the US through Singapore in October, 2011. Lim was arrested on a ferry in Batam on Oct. 23, 2014.
Two of the four have already been extradited, however the Singaporean High Court decided not to extradite Lim. The US government wants custody of Lim, who it holds responsible for the violation of the US embargo to Iran.
In the US, Lim could face a 20-year jail sentence and a fine of US$1 million for the serious embargo violation.(+++)
