0 British man sentenced to 4 years for possession of hashish

Briton Paul Beales, 39, was spared a heavy sentence in his final trial session on Wednesday following the public prosecutor’s failure to tie him to a botched attempt to smuggle 4.7 kilograms of cocaine into Bali. The Denpasar public court’s panel of judges sentenced him to four years in prison for possession of a small amount of hashish. Beales beamed as he shook hands with his defense attorney, Ketut Jaya, at the end of the court session. Earlier, Jaya had addressed the judges and declared that his client accepted the verdict. 

Beales and two other British nationals, namely Julian Anthony Ponder and Rachel Lisa Dougall, were arrested by local police following the arrest of Lindsay June Sandiford on May 19 by Ngurah Rai airport’s customs officials. The officers searched the British housewife’s luggage and found 4.7 kilograms of cocaine stashed inside the lining of her suitcase. According to the police, the 56-year-old confessed that she had been directed to hand over the drugs to a second British woman, identified as Rachel Lisa Dougall. 

Customs officials and narcotics detectives from the Bali Police then arranged for plainclothes detectives to tail Sandiford as she turned the drugs over to Dougall. Dougall allegedly arranged for Ponder to meet Sandiford in the beachside resort of Candidasa in Karangasem, on May 25. Ponder travelled by car, escorted by Beales who rode a motorbike. Immediately after the exchange took place, the detectives blocked the road and arrested both. 

The officers later escorted them to Dougall’s luxurious villa in Tabanan and arrested the woman dubbed by the British media as the Bali Drug Queen for her lavish lifestyle and alleged commanding role in the drug trafficking ring. The officers later searched the residences of all the suspects and found illegal contraband stashed there. In Dougall’s villa, 48.94 grams of cocaine were found, in Beales’ house in Kerobokan the officers found 3.1 grams hashish, and in the house of the fifth suspect, an Indian national Nanda Gopal, around 279 grams of ecstasy were found. 

Gopal was sentenced to five years imprisonment in a separate trial. Initially, the police investigators believed that they had cracked a major drug ring and were convinced that the suspects would face heavy sentences. The cases against Dougall, Ponder and Beales started to crumble when the investigators failed to find any physical evidence to connect Sandiford with the three suspects. 

A source close to the police disclosed that all alleged conversations taking place between Dougall and Sandiford, including the one when Dougall gave Sandiford instructions on where and when to deliver the contraband, were carried out through cell phones. Unfortunately, the investigators failed to retrieve any SIM card during the raid on Dougall’s villa. Things got rosier for Dougall after Ponder admitted in the trial that the cocaine found in the villa was his. 

The prosecutor dropped the possession charge in Dougall’s trial and indicted her instead with failing to inform the authorities of the presence of an illegal drug, a far cry from drug trafficking. During her trial, Sandiford disclosed that she met Dougall and Beales in Bangkok before she took the flight to Denpasar. She said that Beales placed the drugs in the lining of her suitcase and that Dougall was the owner of the drugs. Both denied the accusation. “The defendant had admitted his wrongdoings and had promised not to repeat them,” presiding judge John Tony Hutauruk said, citing the mitigating factors behind Beales’ sentencing.

source : bali daily