Jakarta - Police arrested an Indonesian man Tuesday for trying to smuggle three kilograms of heroin estimated to be worth about 270,000 dollars into the country. The Indonesian citizen, identified only as W, was arrested by anti-narcotics police at the parking lot of Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International airport, after he arrived on an AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Brigadier General Harry Montolalu, director of the national police's criminal investigation department, said the man successfully got through the airport's security checkpoints.

"The suspect flew in from West Africa and Malaysia. The three kilograms of heroin passed through security checkpoints in other countries but we managed to arrest him here," the state-run Antara news agency quoted Montolalu as saying.

The man was only a courier and believed to be member of a West African-Indonesian drug syndicate, he said.

Police estimated the confiscated heroin to be worth up to 3 billion rupiah (272,700 dollars).

An Indonesian court in July last year sentenced an Indonesian woman to life in prison for trying to smuggle more than 3 kilograms of heroin into the country.

Indonesia defends its death penalty as a necessary deterrent in a country with a growing drug problem. Government authorities recently vowed to speed up the executions of nearly 70 drug traffickers on death row despite international calls for the country to halt capital punishment.

Nearly half of those on death row are foreigners, including three Australians involved in the failed "Bali Nine" plot to smuggle more than 8 kilograms of heroin to Australia in
2005. (dpa)