Jakarta - An Indonesian district court has sentenced two Indonesians and a Malaysian to death for illegally distributing ecstasy pills in the country, media reports said Friday. The West Jakarta district court on Thursday found the three, identified as Jat Lie Chandra, 39, Christian, 49, and a Malaysian Lim Jit Wee alias Kim, 42, guilty for violating the country's tough anti-narcotic laws for illegally keeping, storing and distributing ecstasy pills.
Chief Judge Hesmu Purwanto said in the court ruling that the defendants received such a stiff sentence because they had large amounts of ecstasy pills and intended to distribute them in the country.
The three were arrested during a raid in Jakarta in November 2007, in which police confiscated nearly 500,000 ecstasy pills. In addition, the police also seized 2.5-billion rupiah (268,000 dollars), 60,000 US dollars and 168,000 Hong Kong dollars in cash.
Indonesian police at the time said the seizure was one of the largest in a single drug raid in the country.
Ecstasy, a synthetic drug that can be manufactured anywhere with the right equipment and chemicals, is the preferred high of Indonesia's well-to-do teenagers and young adults.
Indonesia defends the death penalty as a necessary deterrent in a country with a growing drug problem. In June, the country executed two Nigerians found guilty of heroin offences - the first drug offenders to be put to death in four years.
The Indonesian attorney-general's office said there were nearly 70 people on death row in the country with nearly half being foreigners, including three Australians involved in the failed "Bali Nine" plot to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin to Australia in 2005.
Indonesian authorities vowed to speed up the execution of the other drug traffickers on death row.
