A man is facing a possible death penalty after large quantities of drugs were allegedly found in his house on a notorious party island near Bali.
A US citizen is facing a possible death penalty if convicted over a trafficable quantity of drugs allegedly found in a house in Indonesia over the weekend.
The 46-year-old man identified only by his initials CS and a 24-year-old Indonesian man identified as MR were arrested and charged after police raided a house in Gili Trawangan, a party island 100km west of Bali known as a hub for ecstasy and where hallucinogenic “magic mushroom” shakes are sold openly at restaurants and bars.
Police claim to have discovered 1224 grams of marijuana in various bags and boxes in the house. They also said they found an unspecified quantity of methamphetamine separated into 13 small ziplock bags, an unspecified quantity of magic mushrooms, as well as smoking implements and cash, allegedly obtained from selling drugs to tourists on the island.
“Drugs are very dangerous for our young generation,” local news website Kumparan quoted Denpasar Police Chief Ruddi Setiawan as saying while 20 alleged drug suspects, all of them Indonesian, were forced to stand behind a table covered in ecstasy tablets, methamphetamine, marijuana and Happy 5 — the Asian name for the hypnotic drug nimetazepam.
“I am waiting for the perpetrators, especially the immigrants, who dare to sell drugs in Bali. I will take decisive action.”
It was the second public shaming of drug suspects in Bali this year. On February 24, a group of 23 suspects wearing orange prison garbs and handcuffs with their feet shackled in chains were presented to journalists by heavily armed riot police at the same park in Denpasar.
The event took place in front of a statue of a bear-chested Indonesian warrior commissioned by Balinese police as a symbol for their war against drugs.
The public spectacles have been criticised by drug counsellors as unnecessary, counter-productive and illegal given none of the suspects had yet been convicted of any crimes.
“How could they do that? That’s not the way to deter them,” chairman of the Balinese chapter of the Association of Indonesian Addiction Counsellors Erijadi Sulaeman told the Jakarta Post.
“Don’t forget they have rights. The police should remember that before someone is convicted, they should uphold the presumption of innocence.”
Police Chief Ruddi Setiawan remained undeterred. “We want to give them some social punishment, apart from the criminal punishment,” he said at the time.
The death penalty is routinely handed to drug criminals in Indonesia, where more than 200 prisoners are currently awaiting execution.
If successfully convicted, CS will become the second American on death row in Indonesia. In 2010, US citizen Frank Amado was given the death penalty after he was caught with five and a half grams of methamphetamine in the nation’s capital Jakarta.
In 2017, Amado and six other foreign nationals were transferred to a super-high-security prison on Nusa Kambangan Island, the so-called execution island of Indonesia, where convicted Australian heroin smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed by firing squad in 2015.
Source: news.com.au, Ian Lloyd Neubauer, April 2, 2019
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but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
