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Jakarta, Indonesia | AFP | Indonesian authorities have seized 1.3 tonnes of marijuana and arrested six people in a major drug bust on New Year’s Eve, police said Thursday.
Authorities confiscated the drugs at a port near Lampung, on the southern tip of Sumatra island.
The bricks of tightly-wrapped cannabis — which were displayed at a press conference Thursday — were found hidden inside several vehicles waiting to cross to West Java, local media reported.
Six people were arrested in connection with the haul, but police have not provided a street value for the seized drugs.
West Jakarta police chief Idham Aziz said drug-related cases in West Java — Indonesia’s most populous province — were increasing.
“Narcotics cases between 2015-2017 are up 11.8 percent and the victims are mostly children and teenagers,” Aziz said at a press conference.
Indonesia has some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world, including capital punishment for traffickers.
Authorities, including President Joko Widodo, have declared the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country is in the grips of a “narcotics emergency”, although accurate data on drug use is notoriously difficult to find.
