British man facing death penalty with execution by firing squad shares more details about alleged incident
Thomas Parker is a British man facing the death penalty in Indonesia for an alleged incident in which police claim he tried to smuggle MDMA into the country.
The 32-year-old was arrested outside his holiday villa in Bali earlier this year, and had been under police monitoring since entering Indonesia from Thailand.
Police in Indonesia claim that Parker is a member of an international drug smuggling ring operating out of Hungary and as such were tracking his movements when a package was delivered to him on 21 January.
The package contained MDMA, and Parker allegedly tried to throw it away before police arrested him and took him in, and if he is found guilty then he is likely to be sentenced to death by firing squad.
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There was just over a kilogram of the illegal narcotic in the package, and possessing over five grams of it is enough to get you the death penalty in Indonesia.
According to the Daily Mail, Parker has provided more details about the alleged incident and claimed that he did not know what the package contained when it was delivered to him.
He claimed that he didn't order the package, alleging that it was sent by a friend called 'Nicky' who he often messaged on Telegram.
The Brit said he'd last seen Nicky a few days before he was arrested, and that he wasn't explicitly told that the package delivered to him contained drugs.
However, since he knew he was getting it from a drug dealer Parker said he suspected as to the contents of the package and claimed that he initially tried to refuse to have it delivered to him.
He told a court that he later relented and agreed to receive the delivery after he was told that the contents of the package were safe.
The next hearing date for the Brit is 20 May.
If found guilty he wouldn't be the only Brit on death row in Indonesia convicted of smuggling drugs, as grandmother Lindsay Sandiford has spent over a decade on death row in the country awaiting execution.
She was found guilty of smuggling cocaine into Indonesia in 2012, and both Brits could face a long wait for the firing squad as the country has not actually executed anyone since 2016.
The last 19 people executed in Indonesia were all sentenced to death for drug trafficking and there are a number of foreign nationals on death row over there, but it has been many years since any of those sentences were carried out.
Topics: World News, UK News, Crime, Drugs, Death Row
Joe Harker