British woman faces prison in Indonesia for smuggling crystal meth

Prosecutors say Andrea Waldeck was arrested after detectives found the drugs in her underwear

Prosecutors say Andrea Waldeck was arrested after detectives found large quantities of the drug taped to her stomach while conducting a search of her hotel room following a tipoff. (Getty Images)

A British former police community support officer faces a 16-year prison sentence in Indonesia, after she admitted trafficking drugs into the country's second city.

Prosecutors are seeking the sentence along with a $166,000 fine.

They say Andrea Waldeck was arrested after detectives found 1,400 grams (3.25 pounds) of crystal methamphetamine in her underwear at her hotel room in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province.

The 43-year-old is believed to have admitted possessing the package but claims she had been forced to smuggle it by her boyfriend, who she says she had been living with in the Chinese city of Dongguan.

Indonesia has harsh anti-drug laws. More than 140 people are on death row for drug crimes, a third of them foreigners. One of those is British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford, who was sentenced to death for smuggling £1.6 million of cocaine in her suitcase.

Authorities believe Waldeck, who left her job as a police community support officer last year, evaded security officials at Juanda Airport by hiding four packages of crystal meth, weighing a total of 3lb, in her underwear.

She was declared bankrupt in 2009 and previously lived and worked in Cheltenham, but left Gloucestershire Police in February 2012.