re: bali bust..just heard on ch 10
Any defence going to be very hard with this one.
Looks like these kids made some very bad choices.
Maybe partly the result of a values-free education where anything goes as long as you can get away with it.
Downer backs police on drug arrests April 19, 2005 From: AAP
ALEXANDER Downer today defended the Australian Federal Police (AFP) after the arrest of nine alleged drug smugglers in Bali, who could end up facing the death penalty. The Foreign Minister said the AFP could not allow the Australians to return to Australia before arresting them because the alleged offences were committed in Indonesia, and the Indonesian police had to be involved.
The nine will face further interrogation in Bali today after being accused of trying to smuggle more than 11kg of heroin into Australia.
Family members of the nine were expected to start arriving on the Indonesia island from today. Advertisement:
Four of the accused were detained at Bali airport on Sunday, allegedly with heroin strapped to their bodies.
A fifth person was also arrested at the airport, and later four others were taken into custody during a hotel raid where sandwich-sized blocks of heroin were allegedly found.
The nine could face a firing squad if convicted of drug smuggling under Indonesian law. As yet no charges have been be laid.
Mr Downer today said he was shocked by the arrests.
"For nine people to be arrested - certainly in my nine years as the foreign minister there has never been a situation like that before," he said on Channel 9.
"A sillier thing for people to (allegedly) do I just cannot imagine.
"People have to know though that trafficking in heroin and trafficking in drugs brings the death penalty in many countries, particularly in Asia.
"If people don't understand that, they certainly will now."
AFP border and international network national manager Mike Phelan said Australian agents had been gathering information about the group for about 10 weeks, and handed it to Indonesian police two weeks ago.
But he said it was not up to Australia to decide where the group was arrested.
"I know that you were saying that should we let the drugs come here - that's not a decision for us," he said on Channel 7.
"When we're involved in international co-operation, these offences have occurred in another jurisdiction and it's very much the domain of the law enforcement authorities in that jurisdiction as to what action they take.
"This is the way it happens, this is the way the AFP has been working for many years."
Mr Phelan said the young age of the Australians was particularly concerning.
"The ages of these alleged traffickers is very young ... that's something that does concern us and it concerns a lot of people ... ," he said in a separate interview with Channel 9.
"Whether these particular alleged couriers are first-timers or not is a matter that's subject to further investigation."
Mr Phelan said AFP officers had exercised search warrants today on homes in Sydney and Brisbane and had seized documents, but no drugs were found and no arrests had been made.
Mr Downer said Australia would always appeal for clemency in any situation where an Australian faced the death penalty.
Just yesterday, he met Vietnam's vice-minister for foreign affairs and pleaded for clemency for an Australian convicted of drug trafficking in that country.
The Australian newspaper today named the alleged mastermind of the Bali group as Andrew Chan, 21, of Enfield in Sydney.
Mr Chan was pulled off a Sydney-bound Australian Airlines flight at Bali's main airport in Denpasar.
"What ever happened to Schapelle Corby happened to me. They are convicting me of something I didn't do," he told reporters in Bali.
The newspaper also named the four who allegedly had heroin strapped to their bodies as Michael William Czugaj and Scott Anthony Rush, both 19 and from Brisbane, Martin Eric Stephen, 29, from Towradgi near Wollongong, south of Sydney, and Renae Lawrence, 27, from Wallsend in Newcastle.
The Australian named the other four arrested in the hotel raid as Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen, 27, from Brisbane, Myuran Sukumaran, 24, from Auburn in Sydney, Si Yi Chen, 20, from Doonside in Sydney, and Matthew James Norman, 18, from Quakers Hill in Sydney.
