DENPASAR: Two British men were given lengthy jail terms Thursday by an Indonesian court after being found guilty of smuggling cocaine into the popular holiday island of Bali.
Kial Garth Robinson was sentenced to 11 years, while Paul Ezra Wilkinson landed a term of nine years.
Both were also ordered to pay a fine of around $60,000 or serve an additional 190 days.
Robinson, 29, was arrested in September last year at Ngurah Rai International Airport after an officer found two packages containing 1.3 kilograms of cocaine in his backpack.
Ho told the police that he was ordered by a man named Santos to transport the drugs from Barcelona to Bali and deliver them to Wilkinson, who had arrived a few days earlier.
Wilkinson, 48, was arrested in Canggu the next day.
Prosecutors said Robinson and Wilkinson were friends who lived in Thailand and had met in Barcelona a week before their arrests.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers, but has maintained a moratorium on executions for several years.
There are dozens of traffickers on death row in the country. Indonesia last carried out executions in 2016, killing one Indonesian and three Nigerian drug convicts by firing squad.
Indonesia jails two Britons for drug smuggling
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Indonesia jails two Britons for drug smuggling
- Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers
Afghan Taliban says Pakistan bombs Kabul in fresh escalation
KABUL: The Afghan government said on Friday that Pakistan had carried out fresh strikes on Kabul and several other provinces.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a post on X that Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia, Paktika, and some other areas, were targeted.
Pakistan has killed at least 641 Afghan Taliban operatives and injured more than 855 in the ongoing conflict between the two sides since last month, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on Wednesday.
Islamabad has said its airstrikes, which have at times directly targeted the Afghan Taliban government, are aimed at ending Kabul’s support for militants carrying out attacks on Pakistan. The Taliban has denied aiding militant groups.
Fresh clashes between the two neighbors began on Feb. 26 after Afghanistan’s border forces launched attacks against Pakistani military installations. Kabul said the attack was in retaliation for Islamabad’s airstrikes earlier in February. Both forces have since then engaged in the worst fighting between them in decades.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have remained strained since the Afghan Taliban seized power in August 2021. Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks across the country in recent months that it blames on militants it alleges are based in Afghanistan. Kabul denies the allegations and insists that its soil is not used by militant groups for attacks against other countries.
While Afghanistan has voiced the desire for dialogue, Pakistan has repeatedly ruled out talks, saying it will continue targeting militant hideouts through “Operation Ghazab lil Haq” until Kabul desists from supporting militants.
