Briton in airport £1m drug arrest may face death

Gareth Chasmore, a 32-year-old roofer from Wakefield, was arrested at Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Jakarta, by customs officers on suspicion of trying to smuggle 6.5kg of methamphetamine hidden in a suitcase compartment.

He had been on a long-haul flight from Manchester, which stopped at Istanbul, before heading to Jakarta where he was arrested.

In South East Asia the laws on drug trafficking are draconian and culprits can expect a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Yesterday a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said: “We are aware of the arrest of a British national at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Indonesia.

“We are providing consular assistance.”

One man who has known Mr Chasmore since boyhood said he was shocked at the news.

He had last seen him in a pub on the estate where he lives with his mother Lynn.

The man, who did not want to be identified, said: “I saw him three days before he flew from Manchester on September 13 and he seemed normal and I didn’t notice anything different.

“He has been involved with the police in the past but nothing serious.

“I have known him all my life and I think he must have got in with the wrong people.

“His mum is not talking to anyone and is obviously very distressed.

“I saw the news on the internet after someone told me about it – I was very shocked to find what he had got involved in.”

“He has always been a nice kid and is well-known round here and everyone is in shock.

“I don’t think he will cope at all well with the rigours of an Indonesian prison.

“He had only recently got access to his young baby boy – he used to see him at weekends so all that will be finished for a while now too.”

Last night Wakefield Labour MP Mary Creagh said she was extremely concerned to hear about what had happened.

She said: “I am ready to give his family any assistance they require and to liaise with the Indonesian authorities and the Indonesian ambassador on their behalf.

“It is a very serious situation and I am completely opposed to the death penalty so I will do everything in my power to ensure that that does not happen.”

Indonesian police said international drug syndicates were recruiting European citizens by promising them huge rewards.

After the arrest, head of the office of surveillance and airport customs service Soetta Olavia Oza confirmed 6.5kg of the drug was recovered at the airport after being found in the wall of a suitcase.

He said there was a new syndicate recruiting drug couriers after moving away from using traditional traffickers from the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and Thailand to using people from Britain.

Another British citizen, Jack Walker, who is from Manchester, was arrested for drug smuggling at the same airport at the end of August.

A ringleader of nine Australian heroin smugglers, Myuran Sukumaran is due to be executed in Indonesia after being arrested in 2005 and losing his final appeal in July this year.

One of the most high-profile cases involving a Briton caught up in drug smuggling in the region was Sandra Gregory, of Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, who was imprisoned in Thailand after being caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport in 1993.

She was desperate to return to the UK and with money running out was befriended by a fellow Briton who made her a proposal to carry drugs for him in return for £1,000 which she believed would be enough to buy her a flight back to Britain.

She agreed to carry 89 grams of heroin, for his personal use, from Bangkok to Tokyo.

On arrival she was detained after a tip-off and held at the Lard Yao Women’s section within Bangkok’s Klong Prem Central Prison, notorious for its brutality, drug abuse, squalid conditions and severe overcrowding.

Although she was found guilty and was sentenced to death, this was subsequently reduced to life imprisonment, then downgraded further to 25 years.

She was eventually allowed to return to the UK and after years of pleading she was released in 2000.

She went on to study as a mature student at Oxford University. She wrote a book about her experiences, titled Forget You Had a Daughter.