Indonesia arrests Argentinian woman and British man for smuggling cocaine into Bali

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DENPASAR, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian authorities arrested an Argentinian woman and a British man for allegedly smuggling cocaine on the tourist island of Bali, officials said Thursday.

The Southeast Asian country has extremely strict drug laws, and convicted smugglers are sometimes executed by firing squad.

An intelligence tip led officers from the National Narcotics Agency to seize 324 grams (0.7 pounds) of cocaine from the woman on Tuesday shortly after she arrived at Bali’s Ngurah Rai international airport from Dubai, said Rudy Ahmad Sudrajat, Bali’s narcotics agency chief.

The suspect was identified only by her initials. During an interrogation, she said she was promised to be paid $3,000 after handing over the cocaine she obtained in Mexico to a British man, according to Sudjarat. The officers then arrested the man, whom they suspect is the lowest-level distributor, at a guest house in the Kerobokan neighborhood in Badung district the same day.

Sudjarat said the drug network is known to target foreign visitors in popular tourist areas in Bali.

“We are still running the investigation to uncover the international cocaine network in Bali and to stop its distribution,” Sudrajat said.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.

About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including 96 foreigners, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections’ data showed last month. Indonesia’s last executions, of a citizen and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.