A British woman facing the death penalty for drugs smuggling in Bali has told a court she was ‘framed’.
Lisa Stocker, 39, is one of three tourists accused of trying to bring in nearly £300,000 worth of cocaine sealed inside sachets of Angel Delight.
But she told judges at Denpasar’s central court: ‘The packages were not mine, but someone else’s. I was framed.’
Stocker was detained alongside Jonathan Christopher Collyer, 28, at the city’s airport in February.
The drugs are said to have been brought into Indonesia from England via Qatar.
The pair were pulled aside by customs officials following the discovery of the packets in their luggage.
Prosecutors said the contents of 10 sachets of Angel Delight in Collyer’s case and seven desert packets in his partner’s baggage tested positive for cocaine.
Two days later, Phineas Ambrose Float, 31, was arrested in a sting by police pretending to stage a delivery in the parking area of a hotel in Denpasar. He is being tried separately.
If convicted, the maximum sentence the trio face is the death penalty. Convicted drug smugglers in Indonesia are sometimes executed by firing squad.
Sheiny Pangkahila, representing the three Brits, suggested they could face prison sentences of 15 to 20 years if found guilty.
Stocker told the court she had been handed the dessert packets by a third man, a friend in the UK, who told her to take them with her to Bali.
She said: ‘Jon and I had been to Bali twice carrying packages from [him]. I was shocked after finding out it was cocaine.’
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Collyer denied receiving any payment in his statement, insisting he paid for his own trip.
He said of the same unnamed man: ‘[He] gave me some goods he handed over to his friend in Bali. [He] told me the package contained snacks, such as chocolate, pudding and chips. [He] said that someone would pick up the package when I arrived in Bali.’
However, prosecutor I Made Dipa Umbara told the court the man paid the £2,130 for the couple’s flights and accommodation.
About 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections’ data showed.
Indonesia’s last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.
A British woman, Lindsay Sandiford, now 69, has been on death row in Indonesia for more than a decade.
She was arrested in 2012 when 3.8 kilograms of cocaine was discovered stuffed inside the lining of her luggage at Bali’s airport.
Indonesia’s highest court upheld the death sentence for Sandiford in 2013.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.
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