“Based on local people’s information,some foreigners wanted to go to Australia through the Citepus waters,so we went out and tried to find them,” said Ali Jupri,the chief detective of Sukabumi Regency police.
“They were at the Citepus village,waiting for the boat. They arrived there in a Grab[ride-hailing] car and we chased them. It was not a quiet arrest – we chased them. It was a bit chaotic because they tried to run away.”
The arrests were made last Thursday,in the same week that a boatload of asylum seekersturned up on the coastline of Western Australia after setting off from Indonesia,the first such arrival to mainland Australia in nine years.
That group wassent to Nauru for processing,but news of the landing intensified a political storm confronting the Albanese government over the release of 141 foreigners from detention following a High Court ruling that they could no longer be held indefinitely.
Jupri said the apprehended quartet told officers they wanted to go to Christmas Island. “They said they were promised to work in a[vegetable] plantation. They said the boat was already waiting in Citepus. We went there but found nothing,” he said.
According to the district police chief,the Bangladeshi men,who are aged between 26 and 58,had entered Indonesia legally,arriving in Surabaya from Malaysia by plane and staying in a guesthouse there for a month before travelling to Sukabumi by chartered bus.
They admitted they had each handed over the equivalent of 100 million rupiah ($9750) to a people smuggler for the journey to Australia,making the payments in Malaysian ringgit before they flew to Indonesia.