BANGKOK, Thailand, September 19, 2002
Thai court sends two Nepalis to life imprisonment.
A Thai court, on thursday, gave life sentences to two Nepalis, a Briton and a Dutchman convicted of trafficking heroin.
The Bangkok Criminal Court ruled that the four men were guilty of conspiring to smuggle 4.3 kilograms (9.46 pounds) of heroin through Bangkok's international airport in October 2001.
The judges handed down death sentences for the four but immediately commuted them to life in prison, saying the defendants had cooperated with authorities. The practice is common in Thailand's judicial system.
The four were identified as Julian Nicholas Gilby, 35, of Britain; Marinus Hendrikus Parlevliet of the Netherlands; and Hari Bahadur Gurung and Pore Gale, both of Nepal.The exact ages of the other three men were not released.
A Thai woman who was a fifh defendant in the case was acquitted but was ordered held pending an appeal by the state prosecutor. The woman, Namoy Nakcharoen, was described as Parlevliet's girlfriend.
All five of the accused had pleaded innocent to the charges.
The attorneys for the four men said they will appeal.Dressed in brown prison outfits and shackled, they stood silently as a judge read out their sentence in Thai.
Acting on a tip-off,Thai police arrested Parlevliet, Gilby and Nam-oy at Bangkok's Don Muang Airport with a suitcase filled with herion. The three suspects had been tailed from a hotel,where Bahadur and Ghale had allegedly delivered the suitcase.
The Nepalis told the court they were stopped on the street by another foreigner and asked to deliver the suitcase to parlevliet and Gilby without knowing its contents.
Possession of more than 100 grams (3.53 ounces) of herion in Thailand is considered trafficking and is punishable by daeth.
Gilby's sister, Karen Cameron, said the family was relieved he had not been sentenced to death but said her mother was "devastated".
"My mother's 70 years old and wants to see her son again.He's not been treted right through all of this. Obviously,She's devastated," She told the British Broadcasting Corp.
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