Bali prosecutors decide NOT to call for three Brit 'drug smugglers' to be executed as they lay sentencing demands

Daily Mail​

24-06-2025

The three Britons held in Bali over an alleged cocaine smuggling plot will not face the death penalty, a major reprieve in a country with some of the world's toughest drug laws.
Indonesian prosecutors said they were seeking 12 months in prison for the three British nationals, all from Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex, accused of drug offences on the resort island.
Jonathan Christopher Collyer, 38, and Lisa Ellen Stocker, 39, were arrested on February 1 after being stopped at Bali's international airport with 17 packages of cocaine that weighed nearly a kilogram, according to public court records.
They appeared in court alongside Phineas Ambrose Float, 31, who was allegedly due to receive the packages and was arrested a few days later in February.
'(Demanding the court) to sentence the defendants to one year in prison and to keep them in detention,' prosecutor Made Dipa Umbara told the district court in Bali's capital Denpasar.
Umbara said that while the defendants were accused of breaking the law, they behaved well in court, acknowledged their wrongdoings, and pledged not to repeat their mistakes.
The sentence call came as a surprise as convicted drug traffickers, especially those caught with large quantities, have in the past been executed by firing squad in Indonesia - including foreign nationals.
If the quantity is large but not enough for the death penalty, life in prison is a common sentence. The country has upheld a moratorium on the death sentence since 2017.
Jonathan Christopher Collyer, 38, and Lisa Ellen Stocker, 39, were arrested on February 1 after being stopped at Bali's international airport with 17 packages of cocaine that weighed nearly a kilogram
The British Foreign Office said it was in touch with local authorities about the case.
'We are providing consular support to three British Nationals detained in Indonesia,' a spokesperson said.
It is understood Balinese customs officers halted the Collyer and Stocker at the airport X-ray machine after finding 'suspicious' items in their suitcases.
They were pulled to a separate area, where staff found the narcotics sealed in blue plastic 'Angel Delight' sachets in Collyer's luggage.
More cocaine was found in seven plastic bags in his partner's suitcase.
It is alleged that the pair were caught with 17 packages of cocaine in total, with a value of £296,000.
There were fears the couple and Mr Float would all face the death penalty, but concerns were somewhat assuaged when another British man arrested for allegedly taking a package of drugs from a taxi driver avoided the death penalty last month.
Thomas Parker, from Cumbria, was arrested near Kuta beach in January after allegedly collecting a package from a taxi driver at a nearby street.
The package contained slightly over a kilogram of MDMA, a party drug and the main ingredient in ecstasy, according to a lab test result cited in court documents.
Parker, a 32-year-old electrician by trade, was initially charged with drug trafficking, but the Denpasar District Court reportedly handed him just 10 months for drug possession.
Parker repeatedly expressed his remorse in his final plea and asked the panel of three judges to consider his situation and impose a lenient sentence.
'I am very sorry and apologise, I know it was a mistake,' Parker said, 'I promise not to repeat it again, because I really didn't know that (the package) was drugs.'
The good behaviour of all three defendants likely helped to alleviate their sentences.
Though Indonesia's drug laws remain very strict, President Prabowo Subianto's administration has moved in recent months to repatriate several high-profile foreign inmates, all sentenced for drug offences, back to their home countries.
Frenchman Serge Atlaoui returned to France in February after Jakarta and Paris agreed on a deal to repatriate him on 'humanitarian grounds' because he was ill.
In December, Indonesia took Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipino woman arrested in 2010 on drug trafficking charges, off death row and returned her to the Philippines some 14 years after she was first detained.
It also sent the five remaining members of the 'Bali Nine' drug ring, who were serving heavy prison sentences, back to Australia.