Two British men jailed for combined 20 years for smuggling cocaine into Bali

Two British men have been jailed for a combined 20 years after being found guilty of smuggling cocaine into Bali.

Kial Garth Robinson, 29, from Chichester, was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Piran Ezra Wilkinson, 48, was handed a nine-year sentence on Thursday.

Both have been ordered to pay a fine of approximately £45,000 or serve an additional 190 days in jail.

Robinson, a landscape gardener by profession, had been charged with multiple breaches of Indonesia’s drug laws, including drugs trafficking, drugs importation and drugs possession.

He was arrested on 3 September at Bali International Airport after customs officers found 1,321g of the drug in his bag, according to prosecutors.

Both men told authorities that he had been recruited into the scheme by a man named Santos who ordered him to take the drugs from Barcelona to Bali. The pair had met the week before their arrest.

Robinson's lawyer, Robert Khuana, said that Robinson accepted the sentence on Thursday. He insisted that he had been “trapped in a syndicate scenario”. Wilkinson’s lawyer said his client also accepted the sentence and that the event would be a lesson for him going forward.

In December last year, a video showed Robinson being brought into Denpasar District Court in orange prison overalls, where he was seen making a series of hand gestures including a thumbs up and a peace sign.

“Give them a smile,” he said, according to the Daily Mail. “Give them a thumbs up.”

Prosecutors said ahead of the trial: “The defendant had been given a further $3,000 (£2,250) on 1 September 2025 to pay for flight tickets from Barcelona to Bali and from Bali to Thailand where the defendant planned to return to a week later.

“This was the first time the defendant had ever carried or brought narcotics into Indonesia. The defendant had also never carried or brought narcotics into any other country before.”

They added: “There was also a budget to rent a room at Anginsepoi Villa, and buy clothing, food and beverages, and other necessities.”

Drug trafficking is a serious offence in Indonesia, with the death penalty being the most severe punishment applied to those found guilty of an offence.

Bali uses the firing squad for its capital punishment offences, but has not implemented the penalty since 2016, when four men were executed for drug trafficking.