Pro American Basketball Player Languishes In Indonesia Over Cannabis Charges, Waiting on One Letter From Washington

On May 7, 2025, an American basketball player went downstairs to collect a delivery at his apartment building near Jakarta and found undercover officers waiting in the lobby. The box had been flagged at the airport. Police said later that it held 132 cannabis candies.“To this day I still don’t know. I guess they flagged the packaging at the airport, opened it, and did a test. Then they still delivered it,” the player, Jarred Shaw, tells The New York Sun in an interview from a military hospital at Jakarta, Indonesia.Indonesia treats cannabis like heroin, and police said the 36-year-old Dallas native could face life in prison or execution. Nearly 18 months after Mr. Shaw’s arrest, however, he is in a guarded room in a military hospital in Jakarta.He spent more than a year in a crowded prison in Tangerang, outside the capital, as Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory condition of the digestive tract, ravaged his body. Only after a specialist found his condition had become dangerous was he moved to the hospital, where he has now spent more than 100 days.He says Indonesian officials are prepared to let him leave once Washington sends a humanitarian release request, but that request has not come.“They’ve been telling me since July that all I need to return home is a humanitarian request letter. That was in July. Here it is, almost November, and I still haven’t gotten that letter,” Mr. Shaw says.A spokesman for the State Department, however, tells the Sun that the “Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans,” and that the department is “closely engaged on Mr. Shaw’s case.”The department has also told Indonesian authorities, in writing, that it is ready to help. According to documents and emails reviewed by another outlet, the State Department wrote on August 18 that the embassy was prepared to assist with repatriation, and said so again on September 18. Mr. Shaw’s team says it has seen neither letter.It is not clear that either letter is the humanitarian request Jakarta has asked for. Six days after the second one, the department asked Mr. Shaw whether Indonesia had given him proof of amnesty or a repatriation letter. In effect, each capital is waiting on the other.From Championship Season to a 12-Man CellMr. Shaw played at Oklahoma State and Utah State, averaging 14.2 points a game over his last two seasons, and the Santa Cruz Warriors selected him 18th in the 2015 NBA Development League draft. He went on to play for about 20 teams abroad, including in Japan, Tunisia, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. In Indonesia, he won a league championship and, he says, fell in love with the country.His Crohn’s predates his arrest, and in Indonesia he struggled to find treatment for it.“Crohn’s is not really a thing here, so I tried to self-medicate the best way I knew how. Obviously that didn’t go how I thought it would, and I ended up getting arrested for medical gummies,” he says.The disease has no cure. It can cause persistent diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, bleeding, fatigue and dangerous weight loss, and flare-ups can lead to intestinal blockages and malnutrition, according to the Mayo Clinic. Patients typically depend on a careful diet and steady medical care, both of which were scarce behind bars.Police claimed the gummies contained Delta-9 THC, the compound in cannabis that gets users high. Mr. Shaw’s advocate, the founder of The Forgotten Prisoner, a nonprofit for people serving cannabis-related sentences, Donte West, contends that the test results came back as CBD.CBD, or cannabidiol, is another compound in the cannabis plant, yet it does not produce a high, and many people take it for pain and inflammation.Mr. Shaw was charged with trafficking and possession, but on December 9, 2025, three judges convicted him only of possession. He was sentenced to 26 months in prison and a $50,000 fine.Indonesian officials make no apologies for the law. Under the country’s 2009 narcotics act, cannabis sits in the most tightly controlled class of drugs, alongside heroin and cocaine, with no exemption for medical use.In 2022, the Constitutional Court threw out a bid by mothers of children with cerebral palsy to legalize it for medical use. Jakarta has long treated drugs as a national emergency and has executed foreign traffickers by firing squad. Two Australians were among those put to death in 2015.By those standards, Mr. Shaw’s 26-month sentence is light. Jakarta has also shown it will hand over foreign drug convicts when their governments formally ask. Since late 2024, it has sent five Australians, a Filipina and a Frenchman home.For Mr. Shaw, though, a short sentence behind bars was no small thing.Inside the Tangerang prison, Mr. Shaw says he lost almost 40 pounds. He suffered sharp stomach pains, nausea, vomiting and dizziness.“My cell had 12 people. Mind you, I’m seven feet tall. They don’t have traditional toilets; they’re holes in the ground,” he explains. “It’s pretty tough when all they serve is a small fried fish and one scoop of rice, three times a day.”Mr. Shaw says embassy officials visited two or three times while he was in prison.“They kind of just told me it’s going to be all right, stay strong, you look fine,” he recalls. “I don’t want to say they ignored it, but I don’t think they knew the severity of it and what I have to deal with on a daily basis.”Mr. Shaw says no one from the embassy has visited him since he was hospitalized.Mr. West, who flew to Indonesia last October to take up the case, says he found Mr. Shaw “very skinny and sick” and got a similar response from American diplomats.“When I talked to the U.S. Embassy, they didn’t really take it seriously,” Mr. West tells the Sun.Mr. West, who says he once went to prison for cannabis himself, persuaded the courts to let Mr. Shaw see an outside specialist at Jakarta. He says the report showed internal bleeding, E. coli and other infections. Mr. West also says the head of Indonesian basketball later told Mr. Shaw that Indonesia’s president had cleared him to move to the hospital, where guards rotate every eight hours.One Request Standing Between Him and HomeThe holdup, both men say, is on the American side.Mr. Shaw says he was told this summer that Indonesia’s president had signed an amnesty for him. No Indonesian official has publicly confirmed it.Mr. West says officials keep asking for updated medical records, though Crohn’s is incurable and the team has already sent records from before the arrest and from the specialist.“What more could you need to get this request through?” he asks.Mr. West also points out that the request needs approval from the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs and its Overseas Citizens Services office so the embassy can forward it to Jakarta.“It’s just a request. As soon as we get that, Jarred can look forward to going home,” he continues.His fear, however, is that the longer the request takes, the more likely Indonesian authorities are to send Mr. Shaw back to the Tangerang prison to serve out his sentence.His relatives in Dallas, including his mother, sister and brother, have sought help from Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Jasmine Crockett and the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, he says.“Any time we reached out to anybody, we got the line that there’s no higher priority for the Trump administration than Americans detained abroad,” Mr. West says.Mr. Cruz, Ms. Crockett and Mr. Paxton did not respond to the Sun’s requests for comment.A Warning for Americans AbroadGroups that work with families of Americans detained overseas say the case carries a lesson for anyone who uses cannabis legally at home.“If cannabis products are illegal in the country you are traveling to, it does not matter if you have a medical condition and that you typically treat the condition,” the director of hostage advocacy and research at the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, Elizabeth Richards, tells the Sun. “It is essential to know the laws of the country you are traveling to ahead of time.”“We do hope there is a resolution soon for Jarred, so he can be reunited with his family and get the medical care he needs,” Ms. Richards says.Mr. Shaw observes that whatever happens, he worries that with the Crohn’s, E. coli and numerous other blood infections detected at the hospital, he will not survive another stretch in an Indonesian cell. He wants one thing from Washington.“From what I understand from the Indonesian side, they’re willing to comply with everything, but they can’t just put me on a plane and send me back without some communication from the State Department,” he says.“I’ve been in the hospital 100 days, and we’re in a gray area with no response right now.”

Pro American Basketball Player Languishes In Indonesia Over Cannabis Charges, Waiting on One Letter From Washington

Pro American Basketball Player Languishes In Indonesia Over Cannabis Charges, Waiting on One Letter From Washington

More from the New York Sun

Chicago Police Are Wrongly Arresting Black Legal Gun Owners, Lawsuit Claims

Rob Gronkowski Rejects Turning Point USA Connection Ahead of Patriots Hall of Fame Induction

Trump Goes to Court in Stormy Daniels Case To Shed His Convicted Felon Status

Stasi Spy Play ‘The Lives of Others’ Gives Cinema New Life on Stage

LeBron James Takes Aim at AI Betting App for Using His Name and Likeness

Carney Government Announces World-Leading Pace for Immigrant Admissions to Canada in 2027

Feds Tear Into New York’s $500 Million Adult Day Care Program for Billing the Dead and Seniors Overseas

MAGA Will Not Be Ignored

More from the New York Sun

Chicago Police Are Wrongly Arresting Black Legal Gun Owners, Lawsuit Claims

Rob Gronkowski Rejects Turning Point USA Connection Ahead of Patriots Hall of Fame Induction

Trump Goes to Court in Stormy Daniels Case To Shed His Convicted Felon Status

Stasi Spy Play ‘The Lives of Others’ Gives Cinema New Life on Stage

LeBron James Takes Aim at AI Betting App for Using His Name and Likeness

Carney Government Announces World-Leading Pace for Immigrant Admissions to Canada in 2027

Feds Tear Into New York’s $500 Million Adult Day Care Program for Billing the Dead and Seniors Overseas

MAGA Will Not Be Ignored