09 May 2024 :
The Medan District Court on May 8, 2024 found three defendants, including a woman dubbed the "drug queen" by local media, guilty of trafficking and sentenced them to death.
Hanisah, also known as Nisa Binti Abdullah, her husband Al Riza, and co-defendant Maimun were convicted of trafficking at least 52 kilograms of methamphetamine and 129 kilograms of ecstasy pills.
Three co-defendants, Narul, Hamzah, and Mustafa, were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Presiding Judge Abdul Hadi Nasution said the court found no mitigating factors to consider leniency for the six defendants.
The defendants were found guilty of committing an "extraordinary crime" with substantial physical evidence against them, the judge said.
The country's tough anti-drug law stipulates the death sentence for trafficking more than 5 kilograms of plant-based narcotics or more than 5 grams of non-plant-based illicit drugs.
In previous hearings, prosecutors recommended the death penalty for all six defendants.
Two other suspected members of the drug ring, identified as Salman and Erul, remain at large.
According to court documents, Hanisah and Maimun were offered payments for smuggling drugs from Malaysia to the Sumatran cities of Medan and Palembang during a meeting with suspected drug suppliers Salman and Erul in the neighboring country on October 22, 2022.
They were promised a payment of Rp 5 million for every pack of meth and Rp 10,000 for every ecstasy pill smuggled to Sumatra.
As a start, the drug suppliers gave them Rp 339 million (around $21,000) to buy a car and rent a warehouse on Sunggal Street in the district of Medan Sunggal, Medan.
Hanisah enlisted her husband, Al Riza, to supervise the warehouse.
On the morning of August 8 last year, police raided the warehouse only hours after it received deliveries of a large amount of meth and ecstasy pills.
The police's anti-narcotics squad discovered the meth concealed in 50 packs of Chinese tea weighing 52 kilograms and 70 plastic bags containing ecstasy pills totaling 129 kilograms.
