Peruvian woman faces death penalty after being accused of smuggling £52,000 of drugs in sex toy into Bali
A Peruvian has been charged by Balinese police over allegations she attempted to smuggle $70,000-worth (£52,000) of cocaine and ecstasy in her underwear and a sex toy.
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If found guilty, the 42-year-old woman, who was only identified by the initials N.S, could face the death penalty under Indonesia's strict drug laws.
Customs officials allegedly uncovered 1.4kg of cocaine and 43 ecstasy pill when they stopped N.S at Bali's main airport on August 12 as she was behaving in an odd manner.
"The narcotics were hidden in six plastic packages wrapped in black duct tape inside a green bra, three similar packages in black underwear, and a sex toy containing drugs, which was inserted into her body," Radiant, Bali police's narcotics unit director, told reporters.
Radiant said N.S claimed she had been paid $19,000 (£14,100) to smuggle the drugs into Bali by someone she met on the dark web in April.
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Police said she had started her journey in Barcelona, Spain, with a stopover in Doha, Qatar before arriving on the island.
Last month, three people from Sussex were spared the death penalty after being charged with drug offences.
Jonathan Christopher Collyer, 28, and Lisa Ellen Stocker, 29, were accused of smuggling in almost a kilogram of cocaine in Angel Delight packages in February.
Phineas Ambrose Float, 31, was later arrested as an accomplice.
Indonesian judges handed the group one-year prison sentences after prosecutors dropped a charge that could have carried the death penalty.
At their June trial, defence lawyers argued that the accused had no idea the food they were given in England contained cocaine.
Around 530 people, 96 of them foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia.
Most of those are for drug-related crimes, figures from the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections show.
Despite this, the country is still a major drug-smuggling hub, according to the UN.
Convicted drug smugglers in Indonesia can be brought to death by firing squad.
.Briton Lindsay Sandiford, 69, has been on death row over a decade after she was found with 3.8kg of cocaine in her luggage.