All we know on three Brit drug smuggling suspects facing death in holiday idyll
Lisa Ellen Stocker, 29, her boyfriend Jonathan Christopher Collyer, 28, and fellow Brit Phineas Ambrose Float, 31, have all been held in Indonesia on drugs charges for the past four months
A British woman, her boyfriend and another man have all been accused of smuggling almost a kilo of cocaine into Bali, hidden inside Angel Delight sachets, from the UK.
The trio - Lisa Ellen Stocker, 29, her boyfriend Jonathan Christopher Collyer, 28, and fellow Brit Phineas Ambrose Float, 31 - go on trial next week in the Bali capital Denpasar next week and are facing the death penalty if found guilty. In Indonesia convicted drug smugglers are usually executed by firing squad.
According to data by Indonesia's Ministry of Immigration and Corrections, around 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including British gran Lindsay Sandiford, now 69.
She has been on death row in Indonesia for more than a decade. She was arrested in 2012 when 3.8 kilograms of cocaine was discovered stuffed inside the lining of her luggage at Bali's airport.
How were the British trio caught?
Stocker, from Gillingham in Kent, and Collyer were arrested together on Saturday, February 1. They had landed at Denpasar International Airport and were stopped at customs. They had travelled from the UK, with a stopover in Doha in Qatar.
Officials claimed to have found suspicious items in their luggage disguised as food packages, when their luggage was passed through the x-ray machine.
Prosecutor I Made Dipa Umbara told the District Court in Denpasar at a pre-trial hearing that a lab test result confirmed that 10 sachets of Angel Delight powdered dessert mix in Collyer's luggage combined with seven similar sachets in his Stocker's suitcase contained 993.56 grams of cocaine, worth an estimated 6 billion rupiah - approximately £272,500.
Two days later, Indonesian authorities arrested Float after a controlled delivery set up by police in which the other two suspects handed the drug to him in the parking area of a hotel in Denpasar.
Why were their bags searched at customs?
The group successfully smuggled cocaine into Bali on two previous occasions, according to Ponco Indriyo, the Deputy Director of the Bali Police Narcotics Unit.
He told the press conference that the trio had been caught on their third and final attempt.
They have now been in prison for four months awaiting trial.
What happens next?
Today, the charges against all three were read to a panel of three judges. They are accused of drug smuggling.
The panel adjourned the trial until Tuesday, June 10. The court will then hear the full case against them and witness testimony.
It is not known if the accused will have a chance to speak or whether they deny the charges against them.
If they are found guilty they could be sentenced to death.
Back in May, Thomas Parker, from Cumbria was sentenced in Bali to 10 months in jail on for drug offences after a charge that could carry the death penalty was dropped.
He had been was arrested in January at a villa near Kuta beach, a popular tourist spot, after he allegedly collected a package containing drugs from a motorcycle taxi driver on a nearby street.
Police officers said Parker was 'acting suspiciously' while he collected the package, according to the court document. He allegedly discarded it in a panic and fled when police approached him. A lab test confirmed the package contained slightly over a kilogram (2.326 pounds) of MDMA, the main ingredient in ecstasy.
During the police investigation, the 32-year-old electrician was able to prove that he did not order the package. It was sent by a drug dealer friend, identified only as Nicky, whom Parker had known for around two years and spoke to regularly through the Telegram messaging app.
Police reduced the initial charge of drug trafficking, which carries a possible death sentence, to the less serious offence of hiding information from authorities after investigators determined that the package was not directly linked to him.
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