DENPASAR, Feb 27 — An Australian man charged with selling cocaine in Bali was jailed for more than five years today.
A court on the Indonesian resort island handed down the sentence to Brendon Luke Johnson, arrested last year with almost 12gm of cocaine hidden at his rental home.
Johnson, who is reportedly 43, and his Indonesian girlfriend Remi Purwanti were each given five years and four months in prison by the Bali court.
Foreigners are regularly arrested for drugs offences in Bali, which attracts millions of visitors to its palm-fringed beaches every year.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws and traffickers can be sentenced to death.
Earlier this year, a Tanzanian man was arrested in Bali for trafficking after more than a kilogram of methamphetamine was found in plastic baggies inside his stomach, according to police.
In Lombok, an island next to Bali, Frenchman Felix Dorfin is facing a possible death sentence case.
He was caught in September allegedly carrying a false-bottomed suitcase filled with four kilogrammes of drugs — including cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines — at the airport.
Several foreigners and Indonesians have been executed by firing squad in recent years, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in 2015.
The accused ringleaders of the Bali Nine drug syndicate were caught attempting to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia. — AFP
