Italian gets life for cocaine

The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

An Italian man was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for smuggling five kilograms of cocaine into the resort island of Bali in a surfboard bag.

The Denpasar District Court also ordered Juri Angione, 24, to pay a fine of Rp 200 million (US$21,200), after finding him guilty of attempting to smuggle 5.26 kilograms of the illicit drug into the country, Antara reported.

The prosecution has recommended that he be sentenced to death.

Bali Police discovered 29 bags of cocaine taped to the side of the surfboard, saying the drugs had a street value of around Rp 5 billion (US$588,000).

Angione denied any wrongdoing and claimed that someone else must have taped the drugs to his surfboard when he made a stopover in Brazil.

Under the prevailing Indonesian law, convicted drug traffickers can be sentenced to death.

But the panel of three judges led by I Nengah Suriada, ruled out the death penalty for Angione, arguing that it was inhumane and went against religious beliefs, AP reported. Bali is a predominantly Hindu province.

Courts elsewhere in the country have been increasingly clamping down on drug traffickers by giving them the maximum sentence of death.

At least 25 people, many of them foreigners, are currently on death row for drug crimes. No executions have been carried out in recent years.

Four of the convicts, in particular Indian Ayodhya Prasad Chaubey, are facing imminent execution after their requests for clemency were turned down.

Angione was arrested at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport shortly after he arrived from Bangkok on Dec. 3, 2003 after customs officials noticed a bulge in his surfboard bag.

The convicted Italian drug trafficker was given one week to appeal the verdict.