A young couple with a six-year-old daughter are among four British citizens facing the death penalty in Indonesia for their alleged involvement in a £1.6 million cocaine smuggling ring.
The couple, named last night as Julian Ponder and Rachel Dougall, were arrested with another British man in a sting operation provoked by the arrest of Lindsay June Sandiford, 55, a Redcar housewife. The couple described the allegations as a "fit up".
The four are accused with an Indian man, of trying to smuggle 11lb of cocaine into Bali from Bangkok and of being part of an international drug trafficking gang.
On Monday, the group was paraded on television in orange prison clothes in a powerful message by Indonesian officials to other would-be traffickers. Only Mrs Sandiford was identified by police, as the others chose to wear balaclavas.
Yesterday, as the first pictures emerged of the couple, their friends on the island chose to speak out to dismiss the allegations as a "joke".
They said Miss Dougall, from Brighton, was a "party girl" who had been innocently caught up in a "bigger game". Distraught relatives had been calling Bali from Britain worried about the wellbeing of her six-year-old daughter, called Kitty, who was currently being looked after by their maid.
Mrs Sandiford, a mother of two, was arrested on May 19 allegedly trying to smuggle 11lb of cocaine into Bali's international airport in the lining of her suitcase.
Yesterday, it emerged that she had agreed to co-operate with the police, in an attempt to reduce any future sentence and had given them details of the British couple's alleged involvement in the plot.
"The reason she co-operated was, we pointed out that if she stayed silent, the whole illegal drug importation attempt would be on her shoulders," Made Wijaya, the head of customs at Bali's Ngurah Rai airport said.
Mrs Sandiford allegedly told drug squad officers that she had not met any of the other gang members but had received instructions to go to a hotel by the beach in Legian, near the fashionable area of Seminyak, and wait for a call. Police decided to move her to a smaller hotel and told her to say the original one was full.
Four days after her arrest, Mrs Sandiford received a call from Mr Ponder, allegedly telling her to go to a small resort called Villa Lumbung Dumah Buitan, in Candidasa on the island's eas coast.
Mrs Sandiford was allegedly told the drugs would be collected from there by a Thai contact linked to the people who had originally given her the cocaine in Bangkok.
Police believe she was watched by the other suspects for a couple of days before they approached her again.
Finally, at noon on May 25, Mr Ponder came to the villa to meet Sandiford, police said. After picking up the drugs, which had been disguised as a present in pink wrapping paper, police arrested him. A fourth Briton, named as Paul Beales, was also arrested that day near to Candidasa in a separate vehicle.
Mr Ponder was taken to the home he shared with Miss Dougall and their daughter. A search of their rooms turned up two packets of Marlboro cigarettes containing more cocaine, police said.
A friend of the couple described the police's suggestion that they were part of an "international network" of drug traffickers as "a joke".
"She [Miss Dougall] is a party girl and I believe that she has been caught up in this somehow. I think she has been coerced and wrapped up in a bigger game than she really understood."
Another expat said: "She always had these fabulous designer clothes on. You'd see her dancing on the tables. She was the life of the party."
News of the arrests shocked Bali's large expat community, drawing comparisons with the "Bali Nine", a group of Australians jailed in 2005 for trafficking heroin. Two of those Australians are now on death row and are being held in the notorious Kerobokan jail to which the britons are likely to be taken.
( read in the English Telegraph)
( perhaps it's OK to want to be the party-girl, than stupidity takes over, now the party is well and truely over, she should have thought about her daughter first!) siK.
wo 30 mei 2012 - 1:59
