Chichester And Littlehampton Men Jailed In Indonesia Over Bali Cocaine Smuggling

Two men from West Sussex have been jailed in Indonesia after being found guilty of smuggling cocaine into the holiday island of Bali.

Piran Ezra Wilkinson, 48, from Chichester, has been sentenced to nine years in prison.

Kial Garth Robinson, 29, of Littlehampton, has been jailed for 11 years.

Both men have also been ordered to pay a fine of the equivalent of around £45,000 or face an additional 190 days in custody.

Robinson was arrested last September after customs officers at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali discovered two packages containing 1.3 kilograms of cocaine in his backpack.

He told police he had been instructed by a man to transport the drugs from Barcelona to Bali and deliver them to Wilkinson, who had arrived on the island a few days earlier.

Wilkinson was arrested in Canggu, on Bali’s south coast, the following day.

Prosecutors said the pair were friends who had been living in Thailand and had met in Barcelona a week before their arrests.

During court proceedings at Denpasar District Court in Bali, Robinson’s lawyer said his client had acted as a courier and had been offered 5,000 US dollars, along with a further 5,000 dollars to clear a debt.

The court heard that while Robinson claimed he did not know the exact contents of the packages, he was aware they were dangerous.

Indonesia has some of the world’s strictest drug laws, with trafficking offences carrying the possibility of the death penalty. Although foreign nationals have previously been executed, the country has maintained a temporary halt on executions since 2017.

A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said it is providing assistance to the two British nationals and remains in contact with the Indonesian authorities.

The case follows a separate incident last year involving three people from East Sussex who avoided the death penalty after being convicted of smuggling cocaine into Indonesia.