Taiwanese drug smugglers lose final death sentence appeal in Indonesia

The Supreme Court of Indonesia on Friday upheld the death sentence against three Taiwanese men who were convicted last year of smuggling drugs into the country.

In its ruling, the court said the crime committed by the three defendants would cause great harm to Indonesians, particularly young people.

Chen Chia-wei (???), Wang An-kang (???) and Luo Chih-cheng (???), therefore, deserve capital punishment, the court ruled in its second trial of the case.

According to the court documents, the three men were arrested at Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in 2014 while attempting to smuggle 2 kilograms of amphetamine into the country from Hong Kong.

They were sentenced to death by a Jakarta district court last year but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in an appeal to the High Court.

Prosecutors, however, appealed the High Court ruling and in January the Supreme Court sentenced the defendants to death.

The three defendants then filed an extraordinary appeal that was turned down Friday by the Supreme Court.

They are the first Taiwanese nationals to be sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug smuggling since that country's President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, took office two years ago.

Jokowi has taken strict measures to crack down on drug-related crimes, saying that drugs are destructive to young Indonesians and advocating the death penalty for convicted drug dealers.

The Indonesian government will show no mercy to anyone convicted of drug crimes, he said.

In August, a district court in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta sentenced four other Taiwanese to death for possession of 26 kg of amphetamine but they have since appealed the verdict.

Currently, some 30 Taiwanese nationals convicted of drug-related crimes are behind bars in Jakarta and Central Java, according to Indonesian authorities.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel