Indonesia jails Argentine, British nationals for cocaine smuggling in Bali

An Indonesian court on Thursday sentenced an Argentine woman and four British nationals to prison after they were convicted of smuggling cocaine into Bali, a popular Indonesian resort destination.

Indonesia is known for its strict anti-drug laws, which include the death penalty for drug trafficking. However, executions have been halted since a moratorium was declared in 2017.

In the first case, 46-year-old Argentine national Eleonora Gracia was handed a seven-year prison sentence by Judge Tenny Erma Suryanthi at the Denpasar District Court. Gracia was arrested in March at Bali’s international airport with over 244 grams of cocaine reportedly wrapped in a condom and concealed in her genitals.

Her arrest led authorities to British citizen Elliot James Shaw, aged 50, who was allegedly meant to receive the cocaine shipment. Shaw received a five-and-a-half-year sentence and was fined 1 billion rupiah (approximately $61,400), with an additional three months in jail if he fails to pay.

In a separate case heard on the same day, three other British nationals — Jonathan Christopher Collyer (38), Lisa Ellen Stocker (39), and Phineas Ambrose Float (31) — were each sentenced to one year in prison for attempting to smuggle nearly one kilogram of cocaine.

Collyer and Stocker were arrested on February 1 at Bali’s airport with 17 packages of cocaine, while Float was taken into custody days later as the alleged intended recipient.

The court did not immediately clarify why the three Britons received more lenient sentences than Gracia and Shaw, despite being involved with a larger quantity of the drug.

Although Indonesia retains the death penalty for drug offences and has executed foreign nationals in the past, the country has not carried out any executions since 2017.

Meanwhile, President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has recently initiated the repatriation of some foreign prisoners convicted of drug-related crimes.