An American basketball player arrested in Indonesia for alleged drug smuggling

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- An American basketball player for the Indonesian league was arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle illegal drugs to the country, police said Thursday.

The Southeast Asian country has extremely strict drug laws, and convicted smugglers are sometimes executed by firing squad.

Jarred Dwayne Shaw, 34, from Dallas, Texas, was arrested May 7, after police raided his apartment in Tangerang regency, just outside the capital, Jakarta, and seized 132 pieces of cannabis candies, said Ronald Sipayung, the Soekarno-Hatta Airport police chief.

The arrest followed a tip from the airport’s customs that reported Shaw had received a suspicious airway package from Thailand, Sipayung said. Cannabis has been decriminalized in Thailand since November 2024. Under Indonesia’s anti-drug laws, Shaw faces up to life sentence or death penalty if found guilty, Sipayung said.

A video circulating on social media purportedly showed Shaw, wearing a black T-shirt and shorts, resisting as he's being pushed away by police and shouting “Help … help!” when he was about to be arrested.

Shaw has played for several clubs in the Indonesian Basketball League since 2022, and signed a contract with Tangerang Hawk last year. He told police during interrogation that he wanted to share the cannabis candy with fellow basketball players, according to Sipayung.

He said the candy contained a total gross weight of 869 grams (30.6 ounces) of illegal cannabinoid inside a package.

“We are still running the investigation to uncover the international drugs network behind this case and to stop its distribution,” Sipayung said.

Shaw did not make any statement when he was presented by the authorities at a news conference Wednesday wearing a detainee orange T-shirt and a mask with his hands tied.

Tangerang Hawks' manager, Tikky Suwantikno, told reporters on Thursday that they regretted what had been done by Shaw and the club had immediately fired him as he has breached the contract.

The Indonesian Basketball League banned Shaw from playing for life, said its chair, Budisatrio Djiwandono.

“We don’t tolerate players, administrators or anyone in the field involved in drugs. There is no room for drug users in the basketball world,” Djiwandono said.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.

About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including 96 foreigners, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections' data showed. Indonesia’s last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.