Local lad strives to avoid Bali jail
THE lawyers for a 17-year-old Mermaid Waters boy accused of stealing two watches from a Bali Airport shop hope to keep him out of the legal system by holding a mediation session with the shop’s owner.
Police say the teenager could face a maximum of 15 months in jail under shoplifting laws.
But the 17-year-old’s lawyer says he is working to have the teenager dealt with through mediation, thus avoiding the courts.
The teenager, who was arrested at the airport on Saturday as he was waiting for a flight to Brisbane, remains at the Denpasar police station. But because he is a minor he is not in the jail cells and is supported by his family.
Denpasar Police Chief, Hadi Purnomo, said yesterday that the teenager would be dealt with according to the law.
Under Indonesian law minors face a sentence that is one-quarter of the maximum for an adult.
Shoplifting carries a fiveyear maximum, meaning that the teenager could face 15 months in jail.
But his lawyer, Putu Angga Pratama Sukma, said that under Indonesian law the obligation was to conduct restorative justice for minors.
“So I will focus on that. Moreover, in this case, the child’s rights are the main thing,” Mr Sukma said.
The legal team was attempting yesterday to hold a mediation session between the teenager, his family and the duty free store owners. That is now expected to happen today.
In an unrelated case a Brisbane man was freed and sent home from Bali yesterday after serving a 10-month drug sentence.
Looking remarkably different to when he was first arrested in October last year, Joshua James Baker was taken into Immigration custody and was last night expected to be deported.
Earlier this year Baker was convicted of using a category one narcotic for personal consumption and sentenced to 10 months in a drug rehabilitation centre, avoiding a long jail term.
He was arrested arriving at Bali airport with 28.02 grams of marijuana mixed with tobacco and 37 pills of Diazepam, which is a restricted drug in Indonesia.
Prosecutors had sought a year in jail but the court decided that Baker was a narcotics victim and needed rehabilitation not jail.
He is one of only a handful of foreigners sentenced to drug rehabilitation in Bali. His lawyers had told the court he suffered depression and bipolar disorder.
Yoga Arya Prakoso Wardoyo, the supervision and investigation chief at Denpasar Immigration, said Baker would be blacklisted from entering Indonesia for six months.