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ational Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said the 11th-hour arrest of the members of an international drug syndicate that smuggled 1 ton of crystal methamphetamine into Indonesia was very alarming.

“How could they carry [the drugs] from Taiwan all the way to Anyer [in Banten] without being detected?” Tito asked in Jakarta on Sunday.

“This is a reminder to us that the monitoring of our waters is very lax,” he added.

Three Taiwanese were arrested by the Jakarta Police in Serang, Banten, last Wednesday, for their alleged roles in the smuggling of 1 ton of crystal meth. Taiwanese national Lin Ming Hui, suspected to be the leader of the syndicate, was shot dead.

In Batam, Riau Islands, the local customs office caught a Sierra Leone-flagged ship allegedly used to transport the drugs on Saturday. They also arrested five Taiwanese crew members.

“The crew did not resist arrest,” Batam customs office prosecution and investigation division head Mujayyin told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

The ship was held at the customs office’s shipyard in Tanjung Uncang.

A team of the National Police conducted a case reconstruction on the ship that was observed by a Taipei Interpol officer and a National Narcotics Agency official.