A British grandmother has been sentenced to death by firing squad for smuggling almost 5kg of cocaine into Bali.
Lindsay Sandiford was arrested in May last year after she tried to enter the Indonesian holiday island with illegal drugs worth £1.6 million hidden in her suitcase.
Local prosecutors had called for the 56-year-old housewife to be jailed for 15 years. But today there were gasps in the Bali courtroom when a panel of judges announced Ms Sandiford would be executed for drug trafficking.
As the shock verdict was announced, Ms Sandiford, from Gloucestershire, slumped back in her chair in tears before hiding her face with a brown sarong as she was led out of the courtroom.
The Indonesian judicial system is Jurassic.
ReplyDeleteHERE: www.expendable.tv/2011/10/bali-trial.html
See how evidence was simply an inconvenience in the Schapelle Corby's case? See what they did to her for refusing a false confession to a crime she didn't commit?
If you resist the bribes, and plead innocence, they crucify you. There is no concept of 'trial' there. None at all.
The police determine the verdict. For example, the so-called "judge" in the Corby case had never acquitted anyone in 500 cases. Not once. Zip.
The sentence itself is determined by bribes to the relevant parties. Whatever you pay will determine what the prosecutor asks for, and then what you get.
This isn't hearsay, foreign governments know it. They stay silent. They appease.
In the Corby case the Australians were so obsessed with hiding systemic corruption at their own airports, and in appeasing Indonesia, that they even suppressed the evidence which proved her innocence. It is there in their own cables. Their own correspondence. It is an unreported scandal.
The result is that we are here.
Instead of confronting Indonesian corruption, foreigner after foreigner is subjected to a show trial, or pays grotesque bribes. The west turns a blind eye.
Now look again at this case. It may not be as it appears.