Jakarta Globe – AFP, January 22, 2014
Andrea Waldeck (center left) and an interpreter listen to a judge at court in Surabaya on January 22, 2014. (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto) |
A British
woman was jailed for 14 years Wednesday but escaped the death penalty after
admitting that she smuggled crystal methamphetamine into Indonesia from China.
Andrea
Waldeck, a former police worker, was found guilty and sentenced at the court in
the city of Surabaya, in the east of Indonesia’s main island of Java.
The
sentence was lower than prosecutors’ recommendation of 16 years for the
43-year-old, who had smuggled 1.5 kilograms of crystal meth into Indonesia.
She could
have received the death sentence for smuggling that quantity of drugs under
Indonesian anti-narcotics laws, which are some of the toughest in the world.
“Andrea
Waldeck has been proven legally and convincingly guilty of offering to sell or
become a middle person to sell drugs,” said presiding judge Faturrachman.
He handed
her a 14-year sentence and ordered her to pay a Rp two billion ($167,000) fine.
Waldeck
admitted at a previous hearing that she had smuggled the drugs into Indonesia,
arriving at Surabaya airport from China.
In a
hearing earlier this month, she said was ashamed of her actions.
She was
arrested late April at a hotel in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-biggest city,
according to her indictment.
She had
arrived a day earlier at the city’s airport from China and managed to get past
security with the drugs concealed in four plastic packages inside her
underwear, the indictment said.
Two members
of a drugs gang had been en route to the hotel to pick up the narcotics — but
police knew about the plan and managed to get there first and arrest Waldeck,
it said.
She claimed
that her boyfriend in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou had asked her to
traffic the drugs in exchange for $5,000, according to her indictment.
She had had
previously worked in southwestern England as a police community support
officer, a part-time member of the force with limited powers.
Her case
comes after British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford was sentenced to death in
January last year after she was caught trying to bring $2.4 million worth of
cocaine into the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
Agence France-Presse
Related Article:
Lindsay Sandiford inside a cell at a court in Denpasar, Bali.
Photograph: Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP/Getty Images
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