Is this a very rare case where a hang glider is incorrectly identified as a paraglider? Or, is "tube" a poorly worded substitute for one of a PG's canopy's airfoil "cells"?
Archer trabalhava como instrutor de voo livre e foi preso em agosto de 2003, quando tentou entrar na Indonésia, pelo aeroporto de Jacarta, com 13,4 quilos de cocaína escondidos em uma asa-delta desmontada em sete bagagens. Ele conseguiu fugir do aeroporto, mas foi localizado após duas semanas, na ilha de Sumbawa. Archer confessou o crime e disse que recebeu US$ 10 mil para transportar a cocaína de Lima, no Peru, até Jacarta. No ano seguinte, ele foi condenado à morte.
Archer worked as free flight instructor and was arrested in August 2003, when he tried to enter Indonesia, at Jakarta, with 13.4 kilos of cocaine hidden in a hang glider disassembled into seven baggage. He managed to escape the airport, but was located after two weeks on the island of Sumbawa. Archer confessed to the crime and said he received $ 10,000 to transport cocaine from Lima, Peru, to Jakarta. The following year, he was sentenced to death.
Sorry, . . . that distasteful pun struck me from out of nowhere.
Anyway, . . .
The sentence seems to have been on the harsh side. But then (obviously) some governments are more SERIOUS about illegal drug smuggling.
Too bad that the good(?) name of "hang gliding" was involved. Of course there are MANY (not so smart) people who would take $10,000 to simply ship their (drug laden) sports equipment into a foreign country. Could be he just failed to pay off the right official.
Three Guilty After Cocaine Glider Plan Flops Sydney Morning Herald Friday November 13, 1987
Three men were found guilty yesterday of being knowingly concerned with importing a commercial quantity of cocaine into Australia inside a hang-glider. The court was told that 20 packets of cocaine weighing more than 2.6 kilograms were brought into Australia from South America compressed inside the struts of the dismantled hang-glider. Cloves of garlic had been wedged between the packets to throw off sniffer dogs.
A Central Criminal Court jury took 26 hours to find Giancarlo Nicola Sonino, 33, and Francisco Carlos Bastos Capossoli, 41, both of Rio de Janeiro, and Manuel Antonio Galleguillos-Tapia, 31, of Chile, guilty of the importation and possession of cocaine. During the 2 1/2-week trial, Mr Peter Dare, for the Crown, led evidence that Sonino and Capossoli had arrived from Rio de Janeiro on December 3, 1986, on the same flight as the hang-glider containing the cocaine. A Customs officer noticed the glider appeared to have been tampered with and, drilling a hole through the wooden plugs, found a white powder which police confirmed was cocaine.
Federal Police substituted packets of a white powder for the cocaine and after the men collected the hang-glider the next day, followed them to the Hyde Park Plaza Hotel. Police installed a camera in the hotel storeroom, where the glider was, and from a linen cupboard next to the storeroom monitored visitors. A police officer saw both men run a scanner over the glider to see if there were any electronic bugs.
On December 5, the two met Galleguillos-Tapia, who had been in Australia for a month, at noon in Hyde Park. Later, they hired a taxi-truck and took the glider to Galleguillos's flat in Wallace Parade, Bondi. They were arrested soon afterwards.
In his defence Sonino, a Brazilian hang-gliding champion, said he had come to Australia for a world hang-gliding championship in January. He claimed that he had never seen the hang-glider before he arrived in Sydney and suggested he was used by whoever packed it. Capossoli, a civil engineer, said he was in Australia looking for work and had collected the hang-glider at the request of an acquaintance named Michael. He had said he had no idea it contained cocaine. Galleguillos, who spent nine months in a Belgian jail on heroin trafficking charges, said he had never met either man before. The three men were remanded in custody for sentencing on November 27.
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