A 56-year-old British woman has been sentenced to death on the holiday island of Bali after a stash of cocaine was found in the lining of her suitcase.<\/p>\n
Lindsay Sandiford from Gloucestershire, who was arrested after flying to the Indonesian island from Bangkok in Thailand, claimed she was coerced into bringing the drugs to Bali.<\/p>\n
However judges yesterday ignored a recommendation from prosecutors for a 15-year prison sentence, instead handing her the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Her lawyers said they were “surprised” at the verdict but the harsh sentence can be taken as a sign of an intention by the island’s law enforcers to crack down on anyone who damages the image of Bali as a holiday destination and undermines its anti-drugs programme.<\/p>\n
Delivering their verdict, the judges said there were no mitigating reasons that convinced them they should reduce her sentence.<\/p>\n
Sandiford’s lawyer said they will appeal. Sandiford, who is originally from Redcar in Teesside, was accused of being at the centre of a drugs ring involving three other Britons.<\/p>\n
Paul Beales has already been sentenced to four years for possession of drugs and Rachel Dougall jailed for one year for failing to report a crime. The trial of the fourth, Julian Ponder from Brighton, believed to be Dougall’s partner, is ongoing.<\/p>\n
He is alleged to have collected cocaine from Sandiford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Judges on this holiday island do not mess around, unlike in The Bahamas where big cocaine dealers barely get a slap on the wrist because they are usually in bed with corrupt politicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[32,31,67,33],"class_list":["post-30611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-drugs","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}