Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- Four people have been detained for smuggling people on an Australia-bound vessel that sank last weekend off East Java, Indonesian police said on Friday.
Police said two of them are owners of the vessel and the other two are crew members. Authorities were looking into an operation that organized the trip, with most of those on board asylum seekers from Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We are still investigating on the syndicate who organized it. We have a specific syndicate now," said national police spokesman Saud Usman Nasution.
Thirteen people, left adrift off the coast of Indonesia after their boat sank, have been rescued by a passing coal freighter, the head of the local search and rescue agency said Tuesday.
The survivors, now numbering 49, are now in the immigration detention room in East Java Immigration office. They are waiting for advice from the U.N. refugee agency on deportation to their countries of origin or to another country that would give them asylum.
Ninety-five people on the vessel were found dead in East Java and Bali waters, and 61 people were still missing, police said.
Despite the numbers of people aboard, the boat's capacity was about 100 people. The traditional wooden boat was about two stories high,.
It was headed to the Australian territory of Christmas Island when it went down, said Dody Sapiawin, a duty officer at Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency.
Christmas Island is an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, nearer to the Philippines than to Australia. The island is about 1,600 miles northwest of the western Australian city of Perth and 220 miles south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
The Australian government has come under fire in the past for what some perceive as a soft border protection policy that encourages asylum-seekers to flee to Australia.
In December 2010, a boat carrying as many as 90 asylum-seekers crashed into the cliffs along Christmas Island, killing at least 48 people.
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