Judges at the Denpasar District Court in Bali sentenced a young American student to five months for marijuana use on Tuesday. Patrick Leland Berg, 19, was found guilty of consuming 0.16 grams of marijuana at a rented house in Denpasar on June 28. Two other foreigners — Dutch national Leon Vrielink, 21, and Mischa Karsen,19, from Germany — and two Indonesians, Ari Ibrahim and Nandin, who were caught at the same time as Berg, have already been separately sentenced to between five and six months in jail. Sigit Susanto, head of the panel of judges hearing the case, ordered “that the defendant remain detained at the Kerobokan Penitentiary.” Berg and the other four were initially held in police custody after their arrest and later moved to Kerobokan. Sigit said the defendant’s marijuana use ran contrary to government efforts to eradicate illegal drugs. “The mitigating factors are that the defendant is still young and has admitted to all the charges,” the judge said. The prosecution had pressed for a sentence of 12 years for Berg. Bali Police announced in October that arrests of foreigners on the island had gone up by 25 percent this year, most of them drug-related.
