Indonesia should build a prison island for death-row drug convicts guarded by crocodiles, the chief of the country's narcotics agency proposed on Monday.
Budi Waseso said crocodiles would be more effective than prison guards because they cannot be bribed nor convinced to let inmates escape, the BBC reports. Waseso said he would tour Indonesia's archipelago to find the best reptilian candidates for the job.
"We will place as many crocodiles as we can there [on the island]," he told local news website Tempo. "I will search for the most ferocious type of crocodile."
Indonesia has some of the most stringent anti-narcotics laws in the world and, after a four-year moratorium on the death penalty between 2009 and 2013, included drug trafficking on its list of capital offenses.
On April 28 an Indonesian firing squad shot dead nine drug traffickers on an island prison off central Java. The group included Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, Nigerians Raheem Salami, Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise, Okwudili Oyatanze and Martin Anderson; Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte and Indonesian Zainal Abidin.
The country's president, Joko Widodo, has defended the death penalty, saying it is a "positive law" for Indonesia as the country fights a "national emergency." According to the Jakarta Post, on average 45 Indonesians die every day as a result of drug abuse.
The Indonesian plan would not be the first time large reptiles have been employed as guards related to the drug trade. In 2013, Californian authorities raided a residence in Castro Valley and discovered a 5ft caiman (similar to an alligator) protecting a 34lb stash of marijuana, worth at an estimated $100,000.
After the arrest of the drugs' owner, the animal, named Mr Teeth, was transferred in poor health to Oakland Zoo, where he died a few days later.
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