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Aust man gets seven years jail in Indonesia

AAP

AAP

An Indonesian court has sentenced an Australian man to seven years in jail for possession of a package of drugs found in his home.

Andrew Roger, 52, has been in Indonesian custody for eight months after police found marijuana, crystal meth and various pills in his home at Surabaya, East Java.

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Prosecutors had argued the former Darwin resident should serve 16 years from a maximum 20 years, because of the quantity and variety of drugs involved.

Roger’s lawyers argued he needed rehabilitation for proven marijuana dependence that had spanned 35 years of his life.

But as well as the jail term, the court imposed a Rp 1 billion ($A98,000) fine, that could be exchanged for an additional six months’ imprisonment.

In court last week, the waste management contractor pleaded to be spared from prison, saying a 16-year term amounted to a life sentence because of his age and poor health.

When Roger was arrested, he was being treated for injuries from a motorbike crash that almost claimed his leg.

He told the court he also suffers anxiety, panic and insomnia if he doesn’t smoke cannabis.

A father of adult children and grandfather, Roger said his time in jail had been “terror”.

“The mental effect and terror of this has been incredible,” he said.

He added that jailing him would only victimise him and the three children and grandchild of his de-facto partner in Indonesia, all of whom he was raising as his own.

According to Roger, the youngest of those children, a boy aged 12, needed treatment for kidney disease, which he was funding.

The trial heard if Roger doesn’t smoke at least six grams of marijuana a day he finds it “impossible to function as a human being”.

He had sought medical help in both Australia and Indonesia, but when he was offered marijuana at a cheap price from a man in a Surabaya car park, he gave in.

“Ganja took over my senses and I agreed,” he told his trial last week.

The dealer had included crystal meth and various pills in the package police found in a raid at Roger’s home in May.

with AAP

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