Jakarta – National Narcotics Agency (BNN) chief Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso will soon travel to North Sumatra in search of crocodiles to help guard a proposed prison-island facility for drug offenders.
Waseso has been calling on the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights – which oversees prisons across the country – to build a special penitentiary for drug offenders, saying that it should be in a remote island to stop drug dealers from communicating with the outside world.
The distribution of drugs is rampant inside Indonesian prisons and there are frequent reports about drug dealers continuing to control their operations from behind bars.
The Justice Ministry has not yet given the green light to Waseso's proposal but he has been busy working out outlandish details about his pet project.
"We will keep sending them food supplies everyday. But they have to survive on their own," he said on Sunday, as quoted by Tempo.co news portal. The island, he said, will be surrounded by crocodiles.
"We will place as many crocodiles as we can there. I will search for the most ferocious type of crocodile," he said. "You can't bribe crocodiles. You can't convince them to let inmates escape. I have informed the Justice Ministry about [the crocodile plan]."
Waseso said he would travel to Medan, North Sumatra, on Monday to visit a crocodile breeding center. "I will also travel to Papua and Sulawesi to see which crocodiles are fiercer," he continued.
Waseso also reiterated suggestions that drug dealers should be forced to consume all of their confiscated merchandise.
"Let them overdose by their own drugs," he said, adding that the BNN was looking for ways to implement the punishment, possibly by revising the current laws on narcotics, which lists the death penalty – usually carried out by firing squad – as a maximum sentence.