Britons accused of smuggling cocaine in Angel Delight sachets could face death penalty

Three Britons could face the death penalty in Bali after appearing in court charged with smuggling nearly a kilogram of cocaine into Indonesia.

Jonathan Christopher Collyer and Lisa Ellen Stocker were arrested on 1 February after customs officers stopped them at an X-ray machine after finding suspicious items in their luggage, prosecutors claimed. A lab test result confirmed that 10 sachets of Angel Delight powdered dessert mix in Collyer's luggage and seven similar sachets in his partner's suitcase contained 993.56g, or over 2lbs, of cocaine, worth an estimated 6bn rupiah (£272,000), prosecutor I Made Dipa Umbara told the District Court in the regional capital Denpasar.

Phineas Ambrose Float, 31, was arrested two days later after police set up a controlled delivery in which the other two suspects allegedly handed him the drug in the parking area of a hotel in Denpasar. He is being tried separately.

The drugs were brought from England to Indonesia via Qatar, Mr Umbara said. The group had successfully brought cocaine into the country twice before, Ponco Indriyo, the deputy director of the Bali Police Narcotics Unit, told reporters in February.

Convicted drug smugglers in Indonesia are sometimes executed by firing squad. The trial was adjourned until next week, when the three-judge panel will hear witness evidence.

About 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, according to figures from the country's ministry of immigration and corrections. One of them, Briton Lindsay Sandiford, now 69, has been on death row for more than a decade after 3.8kg of cocaine was found in her luggage in 2012.

Despite its strict laws, Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub, the UN has said, partly because international syndicates target its young population. Last week, Thomas Parker, from Cumbria, was sentenced to 10 months in jail in Bali for drug offences after a charge that could carry the death penalty was dropped.

He was accused of collecting a package containing MDMA from a motorcycle taxi driver on a nearby street. Read more from Sky News:King Of The Hill actor shot deadRussians react to Ukraine drone attack During the police inquiries, the 32-year-old electrician was able to prove he did not order the package but that it was sent by a drug dealer friend, identified only as Nicky, whom Parker had known for about two years and with whom he communicated via the Telegram messaging app.

Police reduced the initial charge of drug trafficking, which potentially carries the death sentence, to the less serious offence of hiding information from authorities. An Australian man, Lamar Aaron Ahchee, 43, from Cairns in north Queensland, was arrested on 22 May after police allegedly seized 1.7kg (3.7lbs) of cocaine during a raid on his rented home in Kuta Beach.

A police chief said anti-drug surveillance teams reported Ahchee had received two suspicious packages sent by mail to Denpasar from England. He too could face the death penalty..