by: Cindy Wockner, Komang Suriadi From: Herald Sun October 07, 2011 12:00AM Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Print Email Share 0
Kerobokan jail in Bali, where the 14-year-old Australian boy is being held. Picture: Renee Nowytarger HWT Image Library
AN Australian schoolboy faces more than six years in an Indonesian prison after being arrested for possessing marijuana while on holidays with his parents.
The boy, 14, was arrested by police after receiving a massage in Kuta, Bali.
Police sources allege he was carrying 6.9g of marijuana, which he told officers he bought off a dealer who claimed he hadn't eaten for a day and needed money.
The drugs cost him the equivalent of $28.
Under strict Indonesian narcotics laws, the teenager from the NSW Central Coast could be held in a Bali police cell without charge for 30 days and tried as an adult, in which case the maximum sentence is 12 years' jail.
That sentence would be served in Bali's Kerobokan Jail, alongside murderers, sex offenders and gang members, and where a prisoner was last week bashed to death by a fellow inmate over a $6 drug debt.
If convicted on possession charges, the teen's only solace will be a peculiar unwritten rule in the Indonesian justice system that usually sees juvenile offenders receive half the sentence an adult would receive.
Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd last night ordered consular officials to make securing the teenager's release "their top priority".
"(They will) undertake all efforts to have the matter resolved quickly and see the early release of the boy," a spokeswoman from Mr Rudd's office said last night.
The teen is believed to have been on holiday in Bali with his parents and friends and is now being held in the jail cells at Denpasar police headquarters, where sources say he is very stressed and in tears.
He has been visited in the jail cells by consular officials and his parents - all of whom are said to be extremely concerned about his welfare.
Sources said he was in the upstairs section of the drug squad building in a holding cell with three to four other detainees.
The cell is about 3m by 3m, with an Indonesian squat toilet and a thin mattress.
While scores of Australians have been arrested in Bali in possession of drugs in small and large amounts, the teenager is the youngest to have faced Indonesian justice.
Under Indonesian law, there are no children's court systems and very few children's jails.
Juveniles are dealt with in the mainstream court system and are often housed in adult jails.
The main difference between the way a child and an adult is dealt with under the law is that a child's case must be presented to prosecutors within 30 days of his arrest. For adults the time frame is 90 days.
Most Australians arrested in Bali recently in possession of small amounts of drugs have initially been charged with the 12-year drug possession laws, but had the charges dropped when they gave evidence of being addicted to drugs.
The laws for drug addicts using drugs for their own personal use carry only a four-year maximum term.
Victorian man Ricky Shane Rawson was recently released after serving a four-month term for possession of 0.06g of methamphetamine.
