An
Indonesian court has sentenced a British grandmother to
death after she was found guilty of smuggling 11lbs of cocaine into
the island of Bali.Prosecutors had been pushing for a 15-year prison term, but
judges handed down the death penalty, saying that Lindsay Sandiford
expressed little concern over the consequences of her actions.
Sandiford’s lawyer
has said that the court did not consider the fact that she was
forced into smuggling the cocaine under threat of violence to her
family.According to British Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire,
Sandiford still has a few appeal options left within the Indonesian
judicial system. After the appeals are exhausted there is the
possibility that Sandiford could be
pardoned by Indonesia’s president, who has pardoned four drug
dealers on death row since 2004.Indonesia has some of the strictest drug laws in the world, and
Sandiford is only the latest foreign national to have received the
death penalty or a long prison sentence for drug offenses. No doubt
the strict sentences are in place to reduce the number of people
using and selling drugs. However, even with these draconian
sentences there has not been a significant reduction of drug use in
Indonesia, as I noted
back in March. An official from Bali's Customs and Excise
Agency justified the harsh sentence
saying:
The main reason is because narcotics can massively endanger the
young and, thus, whoever is caught with drugs should be severely
punished. If three people can consume one gram of cocaine, then
this operation has potentially saved up to 14,000 lives,
What is stunning is that there is an example of legislation that
does reduce the use of “hard
drugs” without requiring that the state kill people. The
Portuguese have
decriminalized all drugs, and the results have been
encouraging. It is a shame it is taking so long for Indonesian
authorities to realize that executing grandmothers might not be the
best way to reduce drug consumption. … Read More
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