New Zealander on trial for trying to smuggle drugs out of China
Print Edition
A MAN from New Zealand stood trial yesterday on charges of smuggling millions of dollars worth of drugs out of China, in a case that could carry the death penalty.
The case follows executions in Indonesia last week of two Australian drug smugglers, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, along with six others from several countries.
Chinese authorities arrested Peter Gardner, 26, at the international airport in the southern city of Guangzhou on November 8 last year. They said he was carrying bags with nearly 30 kilograms of methamphetamine or “ice.”
Customs officials put the market value of the drugs at several million dollars.
His parents and New Zealand officials were at the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court yesterday when Gardner, seated in handcuffs before three judges, denied the charges.
Gardner, who also has Australian citizenship and lives in Sydney, said he came to China to buy several kilograms of a muscle-building supplement, “but I didn’t check the parcel after I got the delivery,” he said.
“Without a doubt this is the biggest mistake of my life,” Gardner told the judges. When he saw the drug being ripped from the bags, he added, “my heart dropped.”
He told the court: “The crime I committed affected my family, and I would do anything that would help me in this situation, so I’d like to help the police to identify other suspects. And I’d like to point out the other Chinese suspects as soon as possible if police hand me photos for me to identify.”
Gardner entered China on his New Zealand passport and said he was in the country to pick up a quantity of athletic performance enhancing drugs, arranged through an intermediary in Sydney.
He was given two sealed black carrier bags by two Chinese men while he was staying 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.
He was detained along with a 22-year-old Australian woman who later was released.
His lawyer Zhang Jie said Gardner was tricked into being an accomplice in a smuggling scheme and that he had never touched any of the methamphetamine that was seized by customs officials.
“He’s been feeling very sorry for doing this,” the attorney added. “He was just playing a small part in this and running errands.”
The court was shown a security video of an exchange in which Gardner met two Chinese men in the lobby of the Hilton in Guangzhou.
He is seen approaching the men, exchanging a code to confirm identities and then taking possession of two adidas-brand duffel bags.
The prosecution also showed a video from Chinese customs of the moment the bags were opened at Guangzhou’s Baiyun airport.
In the video, which lasted more than five minutes, officials pull out more than 60 plastic bags containing a white powder and place them on a table.
The trial ended yesterday without a verdict, which will be given at a later date.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, who was asked about the case at a regular briefing yesterday, said that drug smuggling does “great harm to society” and the case will be handled according to law. “We will be very cautious about using the death penalty,” she said.
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.
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