The court found that the defendants had conspired to traffic more than 5 grams of the Class I synthetic drug over an extended period.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for the five key defendants: Satria Nanda, the former head of the Barelang Police narcotics unit, as well as his subordinates Shigit Sarwo Edhi, Rahmadi, Fadhilah and Alex Chandra.

Meanwhile the prosecution had demanded life imprisonment for the remaining defendants Wan Rahmat, Ibnu Ma’ruf Rambe, Arianto, Jaka Surya and Junaidi.

“The sentence reduction from the death penalty to life imprisonment reflects the commitment of the Indonesian legal system to providing convicted individuals with an opportunity for rehabilitation,” Judge Douglas Napitupulu said on Thursday, as quoted by state news agency Antara.

In connection with the case, the court also sentenced Aziz Martua Siregar and Zulkifli Simanjuntak to 20 years in prison for drug dealing.

The police officers were convicted on charges related to their involvement in smuggling 44 kilograms of methamphetamine from Malaysia to Batam in June 2024.

The officers were accused of concealing 9 kg of the drug and conspiring with a dealer to stage a fake raid to “seize” the remaining 35 kg, which also resulted in the arrest of three couriers and buyers.

The prosecutors alleged the 10 policemen carried out the scheme after they had been reprimanded by their superiors for failing to meet their performance targets, including not uncovering any major drug cases.

Last July, around a month after the staged drug bust, the officers gradually sold 4 kg of the hidden cache of methamphetamine to three dealers, including Aziz and Zulkifli. They earned approximately Rp 960 million from the deal, distributing Rp 500 million to their suppliers and pocketing the remaining Rp 460 million.

In August, the officers sold 1 kilo of the drug to Aziz, who was arrested by the Batam Police soon afterward that led to an internal probe into the officers’ activities.

This prompted some officers involved in the deal to try and sell the remaining 5 kg to other dealers in an attempt to raise money for their legal costs, but their effort was thwarted when those dealers were also apprehended.

Crooked cop precedent

This is not the first case in which police officers have been sentenced to life imprisonment for drug offenses.

In May 2023, the West Jakarta District Court handed down a life sentence to Teddy Minahasa, a former two-star police general and West Sumatra Police chief, for his involvement in a scheme to sell illicit drugs that the Bukittinggi Police had seized during a local operation.

The three-judge panel found Teddy guilty of orchestrating a scheme in May 2022 to steal 5 kg of methamphetamine from the Bukittinggi Police’s drug vault for selling to dealers in Jakarta.

During his sentence hearing on May 9, 2023, the court said Teddy had instructed his subordinate Dody Prawiranegara, a mid-ranking officer, to swap 10 kg of confiscated methamphetamine in the evidence storage with alum, a chemical compound that has a similar appearance, in a plot to sell the drug on the streets.

According to the court, after initially refusing Dody later relented and agreed to sell only 5 kg of the narcotic, enlisting the help of his aide Syamsul Maarif to make the switch. Teddy put Dody in touch with his longtime acquaintance Linda Pudjiastuti, aka Anita Cepu, who paid Rp 300 million (US$20,320) for the 5 kg of meth and then resold it to drug dealers in Jakarta. (nal)