(JG Photo/Yudhi Sukma Wijaya)

Jakarta. A mid-ranking anti-narcotics police officer recently investigated on suspicion of bribery has not been detained and his case is not related to convicted drug kingpin Freddy Budiman, a police source says.

The officer, with the rank of adjutant senior commissioner — the police equivalent of a lieutenant colonel — and several of his men stand accused of taking an undisclosed amount of bribes during the arrest of an alleged ecstasy dealer in Bandung sometime between March and April.

A police source, speaking to the Jakarta Globe on condition of anonymity, said the officer, identified only by the initial P., was a member of the National Police’s anti-narcotics directorate.

The National Police’s chief of detectives, Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, who oversees that directorate, confirmed that one of his officers was being investigated by the police’s internal affairs unit and was at one point briefly detained.

“This is only a suspicion. [The investigation] was the result of the development [of a related case],” he said. “Internal affairs have the details, they’re the one with authority [to disclose more information].”

The internal affairs department could not immediately be reached for comment.

The officer in question was also involved in the 2012 arrest of drug kingpin Freddy, who was in 2013 sentenced to death for trafficking a million ecstasy pills, with an estimated street value of Rp 45 billion ($3.45 million), into the country from China.

Freddy garnered national attention again late last month when it was discovered that he was still operating his drug trafficking ring from inside his cell at the ostensibly high-security prison island of Nusakambangan, off the southern coast of Central Java.

He was transferred there last year after the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) raided Cipinang Penitentiary in East Jakarta and discovered a new type of drug called CC4 — said to be 10 times more potent than ecstasy — being manufactured there as part of his operation.

The Nusakambangan raid stemmed from the arrest in March of one of Freddy’s alleged pushers, who told police that he was still taking orders from the death-row inmate. But the police source said that the investigation into the anti-narcotics officer was not related to Freddy’s new case, even though both occurred at around the same time in March.

The post Source: Officer Being Investigated Not Linked to Drug Kingpin appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.

Source: The Jakarta Globe