Indonesian police raid drug lab in Bali villa

DENPASAR, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian police raided what they said was a major drug lab hidden in a villa on the resort island of Bali, and arrested four people, authorities said Monday.

Police raided the house in the upscale resort area of Canggu early this month, said Wahyu Widada, head of the National Police’s Criminal Investigation Department, finding two drug labs in its basement.

He said one of the villa’s labs was designed to produce the ingredients for ecstasy, and the other contained a hydroponic farm marijuana. Police were tipped off to the facility after an earlier raid on a Jakarta lab linked to Indonesia’s most wanted drug lord.

Police arrested an Indonesian man identified by his initial as LM, two Ukrainian men identified as IV and MV, and a Russian man identified as KK, during the raids.

The four men could face execution. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has strict laws against consumption of marijuana and other drugs, even for medical treatment.

Most of the more than 150 people on Indonesia’s death row were convicted of drug crimes, about one-third of whom are foreigners. The country’s last executions were in 2016, when one Indonesian and three foreigners were shot by a firing squad.

Widada said police were tipped off to the “clandestine” labs after interrogating a suspected drug trafficker arrested in an April raids in the capital, Jakarta, on a similar lab that police say was owned by drug lord Freddy Pratama.

Widada said one of the men arrested this month, LM, was Pratama’s accountant, and was involved in operating a drug lab in Jakarta before moving to Bali to avoid arrest. He was arrested at a rented house near Kuta, a popular tourist spot, with 6 kilograms (13.2 pounds) of