Jakarta: Two British men have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling over a kilogram of cocaine onto the Indonesian resort island of Bali, an official said on Tuesday, potentially exposing them to some of the world’s toughest drug laws.
Indonesia commonly sentences drug traffickers to death, although the country has not carried out such a sentence for nearly a decade.
Rudy Ahmad Sudrajat, the head of the Bali Narcotics Agency, said an airport security officer intercepted one of the men, a 29-year-old identified by his initials K.G., during a security check last Wednesday.
An X-ray check subsequently found around 1.3 kilograms (2.9 pounds) of cocaine in his bag, he told a press conference.
Rudy said K.G. had been “asked by someone named Santos to carry the bag... from Barcelona to Bali” and deliver it to another British man there.
Police arrested the second man, another Briton identified as P.E., at a villa in Bali’s Badung district on Thursday.
Rudy said the pair were friends who lived in Thailand and had met in Barcelona a week before their arrests, adding that there was “a possibility they are a part of a cartel.”
Dozens of foreigners, including a cocaine-smuggling British grandmother, are on death row in Indonesia for drug offenses.
Indonesia last carried out executions in 2016, killing one of its own citizens and three Nigerian drug convicts by firing squad.
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Britons arrested in Bali for alleged cocaine smuggling
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Britons arrested in Bali for alleged cocaine smuggling
- Indonesia commonly sentences drug traffickers to death, although the country has not carried out such a sentence for nearly a decade
- Dozens of foreigners, including a cocaine-smuggling British grandmother, are on death row in Indonesia for drug offenses
Bolivia and Israel to restore ties severed over the war in Gaza
- Paz's government eased visa restrictions on American and Israeli travelers last month
- The Bolivian foreign ministry said its top diplomat would meet his Israeli counterpart in Washington later Tuesday to discuss the revival of bilateral ties
LA PAZ, Bolivia: Bolivia's new right-wing government said Tuesday that it would restore diplomatic relations with Israel, the latest sign of the dramatic geopolitical realignment underway in the South American country that was once among the most vocal critics of Israeli policies toward Palestinians.
The Bolivian foreign ministry said its top diplomat would meet his Israeli counterpart in Washington later Tuesday to discuss the revival of bilateral ties, which Bolivia's previous left-wing government severed two years ago over Israel's devastating campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Bolivia said the effort came as part of a new foreign policy strategy under conservative President Rodrigo Paz aimed at “rebuilding Bolivia's international prestige, opening new economic opportunities and strengthening alliances that directly benefit the country and our citizens abroad."
Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Aramayo is in the midst of a whirlwind trip to Washington for meetings with American officials as his government works to warm long-chilly relations with the United States and unravel nearly two decades of hard-line, anti-Western policies under the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party that left Bolivia economically isolated and diplomatically allied with China, Russia and Venezuela.
Paz's government eased visa restrictions on American and Israeli travelers last month.
In announcing his expected meeting with Aramayo on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar thanked Bolivia for scrapping Israeli visa controls and said he spoke to Paz after the center-right senator's Oct. 19 election victory to express “Israel’s desire to open a new chapter” in relations with Bolivia.
Paz entered office last month, ending the dominance of the MAS party founded by Evo Morales, the charismatic former coca-growing union leader who became Bolivia's first Indigenous president in 2006. Not long after taking power, Morales sent Israel's ambassador packing and cozied up to Iran over their shared enmity toward the U.S. and Israel.
When protests over Morales' disputed 2019 reelection prompted him to resign under pressure from the military, a right-wing interim government took over and restored full diplomatic relations with the U.S. and Israel as it sought to undo many of Morales’ popular policies.
But 2020 elections brought the MAS party back to power with the presidency of Luis Arce, who in 2023 once again cut ties with Israel in protest over its military actions in Gaza.
Other left-wing Latin American countries, like Chile and Colombia, soon made similar moves, recalling their ambassadors and joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the United Nations’ highest judicial body.
