British woman sentenced to death in Bali for carrying £1.6million worth of cocaine in her suitcase

Lindsay Sandiford, 56 from Britain who was caught carrying £1.6 million worth of cocaine in her suitcase in Bali, Indonesia has been sentenced to death for drug trafficking.

Lindsay Sandiford listening to the verdict in the court [photo: EPA]

Although pleading guilty, she claimed she was coerced into the crime because her children were threatened. But in its verdict, a judge panel headed by Amser Simanjuntak concluded that Sandiford has damaged the image of Bali as a tourism destination and weakened the government's fight against drugs.

Lindsay Sandiford, from Gloucestershire, was arrested in May last year following a routine customs check by police as she tried to enter Indonesia on a flight from the Thai capital Bangkok with £1.6 million worth of the Class A drug.

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State prosecutors had called for the 56-year-old housewife to be jailed for 15 years but there was a gasp in the Bali courtroom when she was told she would be killed for her crime.

Sandiford, originally from Redcar on Teesside, was one of a 'British gang of four’ who were caught and prosecuted after she tried to smuggle £1.6 million of cocaine into the country from Thailand.

The usual sentence for the amount of cocaine found in the lining of her suitcase – 4.8kg – is execution.

via Mail Online (22 January)
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