Briton Gets 14 Years in Prison for Indonesia Drug Smuggling

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

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Lindsay Sandiford inside a cell at a court in Denpasar, Bali.

Photograph: Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP/Getty Images