JAKARTA (AFP) – An Indonesian court on Friday handed death sentences to eight Iranian drug traffickers found guilty of smuggling more than 300 kilogrammes (kg) of crystal meth into the Southeast Asian country.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws but has held off conducting executions for several years.
A judge in Banten province on Java island ordered that all eight men be executed by firing squad for the gang’s role in smuggling 319kg of the illegal drug.
Uli Purnama addressed the defendants individually, ruling each one had been “convincingly proven guilty of committing intentionally a criminal act… as an intermediary in the transaction of class 1 narcotics”.
He told each of them he was “therefore sentencing the defendant” to death.
The judge said all eight were found trying to smuggle the drugs through the Indian Ocean to Java, Indonesia’s most populated island, before being caught in February at a port in Banten.
