JAKARTA: A court in Indonesia convicted 19 members of a baby-trafficking syndicate on Tuesday after they were found guilty of selling dozens of children under the guise of adoption across the country and to Singapore.
At least 34 Indonesian babies were sold by the trafficking ring between 2023 and 2024. Its members were arrested last year, following a report of a baby kidnapping in Indonesia’s West Java province.
The Bandung District Court handed down the longest sentence of seven years in prison to 70-year-old Lie Siu Luan — also known by the aliases Lily and Popo — whom the court identified as the mastermind behind the operations.
“We declare that the defendant Lie Siu Luan … has been legally proven guilty of committing the criminal act of recruiting, harboring, sending, transferring or receiving a person … for the purpose of exploitation,” presiding judge Gatot Ardian Agustriono said as he read out the ruling.
The sentence was lower than the prosecutors’ demand of 10 years for Lie, who previously told the court she had trafficked at least 12 babies to Singapore.
According to the indictment, Lie agreed to find babies to send for adoption to Singapore in 2023, after she was offered S$18,000 ($13,956) for each one by a Singaporean national identified as Petter.
Another defendant, Astri Fitrinika, whom prosecutors accused of being the main broker, was sentenced to six years and seven months’ imprisonment, along with defendants Djaka Hamdani Hutabarat and Elin Marlina.
Prosecutors said Hutabarat and Marlina, a married couple, had assisted Fitrinika by connecting her with Indonesian “adopters” found through a Facebook group.
Court documents showed they were involved in selling at least 12 of the babies, who were each sold for between 9 and 15 million rupiah ($503 and $839), with the couple taking less than 800,000 rupiah for every transaction.
A similar prison sentence of six years and seven months was also handed down to Siu Ha, or Lai Siu Ha, who was accused of falsifying official documents related to adoption requirements.
The other 14 defendants, whose roles ranged from the babies’ caregivers to posing as the children’s biological parents, were sentenced to three years and four months in prison each.
Only Siu Ha has so far said she would file an appeal. Meanwhile, the prosecution team reportedly said they would decide whether or not to appeal within seven days.
