Aussie on drug charges in China faces death

GUANGZHOU — An Australian man facing a possible death sentence yesterday on charges of attempting to smuggle millions of dollars’ worth of drugs out of China, claims he thought he was carrying athletic performance-enhancing supplements.

His trial follows Indonesia’s high-profile executions last week of two convicted Australian drug smugglers, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, alongside six others from several countries, despite repeated appeals for clemency.

The Chinese authorities arrested New Zealand-born Peter Gardner, 26, at the international airport in the southern city of Guangzhou last November, carrying bags of nearly 30kg of methamphetamine, known as “ice”. Customs officials put the market value of the drugs at several million dollars.

As his parents and New Zealand officials watched, Gardner, seated in handcuffs before three judges in the Guangzhou Intermediate Court, pleaded his innocence in a live online broadcast of the court proceedings that took place yesterday. “Without a doubt this is the biggest mistake of my life,” Gardner told the judges. When he saw the ice being ripped from the bags, he added: “My heart dropped.”

Gardner holds dual Australian and New Zealand citizenship but entered China on his New Zealand passport. He said he had travelled there to pick up a quantity of athletic performance-enhancing supplements arranged through an intermediary in Sydney.

According to Gardner, he had paid the supplier about A$13,000 (S$13,800) for a variety of peptides and tanning agents that were well-known among Sydney’s bodybuilders and rugby players. He was given two sealed black carrier bags by two Chinese men during his stay at the Hilton Hotel, he told the court.

Airport customs officials later discovered the bags contained ice.

The Sydney intermediary was a trusted friend, Gardner told the court, and he was just “following instructions” in taking the bags.

As the trial concluded, he said he “accepted the facts” admitting that he had done something wrong and had attempted to move “objects”, but said he was not guilty of trafficking ice. Gardner’s verdict will be announced on another unspecified day, said the judges.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully’s office said he stated his country’s opposition to the death penalty when he visited China last week, but that New Zealand would neither comment nor intervene further given it is a judicial matter in another country.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did not know the details of the case. “But as we’ve said previously the trafficking of drugs is a very serious crime that is terribly harmful to society and we resolutely oppose it and deal with it in accordance with the law. As for the death penalty, it is used very cautiously in China,” she told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

The Chinese authorities blamed a rise in violent crime last year on a surge in drug smuggling from South-east Asia. Drug use in China has grown along with the rise of a new urban class with more disposable income. Under China’s drug laws, anyone caught with 50 grams or more of heroin or methamphetamine is liable for capital punishment.

Former jockey Anthony Bannister, who claimed to have been framed after being caught with three kilograms of ice in his luggage, is also waiting for a verdict from his trial last October on whether he would be put on death row. Another eight Australians are still awaiting trial or verdict on serious drug charges by Chinese prosecutors. AGENCIES