Jakarta: A former top war correspondent was arrested with Australian man Giuseppe Serafino in Bali for allegedly possessing hashish.
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David Matthew Fox worked for the news agency Reuters for 20 years, covering conflicts including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor and Kosovo, natural disasters in Pakistan and Sri Lanka and the Zaire refugee crisis.
A Bali police press statement said Mr Fox, 54, told them he had begun using hashish due to stress after being assigned to cover the Somalia conflict as a Reuters journalist.
Bali police found a total of just over 17 grams of hashish, the resin from cannabis, belonging to the two men in Sanur, a beachside town in Bali's south-east, on Saturday, October 8.
"They claim it was for personal use," Denpasar police narcotics chief Gede Ganefo told reporters.
Mr Serafino, 48, who had been living in Bali since 2011, told police he began using hashish after he was diagnosed with cancer.
"He uses the hashish to increase his appetite and for a cancer therapy," the police press statement said.
Mr Serafino told police he had never been convicted in his country or Indonesia.
Police went to Mr Serafino's home in Sanur at 12.30pm on Saturday, October 8, after being told a foreigner was believed to be using drugs.
They found 7.32 grams of hashish in a black suitcase. Police said he had sourced the hashish from an unknown man via SMS, whom he had met at McDonalds in Sanur and paid three million Rupiah ($300).
Police said that while they were searching Mr Serafino's home the Australian received a text message from a member of the Indonesian Army who asked if he wanted to purchase shabu shabu (ice).
They said the army officer, who has also been arrested, told them he got the shabu shabu from an active duty police officer in Bali.
The police press statement said Mr Serafino, whom they referred to as GS, also named his friend FDM (David Matthew Fox) as someone who knew how to get hashish.
Police arranged for Mr Serafino to organise to meet Mr Fox at 4.30pm.
"FDM was then arrested with a package of hashish inside the pocket of his shorts," the statement said.
Police took him to his home in Sanur where more hashish was allegedly found in a boxing glove.
Mr Fox reportedly told police he had bought the hashish from a Briton, GR, at a bar in Sanur for three million rupiah.
"FDM said he had bought the hashish from GR five times in the last eight months," the press statement said.
It said Mr Fox said he had been using hashish for years. "He started using because of stress when he was assigned as a Reuters journalist to a conflict area in Somalia."
Both Mr Fox and Mr Serafino have been named suspects for possessing category one narcotics (not a plant) under article 112 of Indonesian law.
This carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for possession of more than five grams and a minimum penalty of five years' jail.
The alleged evidence, including a black substance in a small ziplock plastic bag and blue boxing gloves, were presented at a police press conference in Bali on Monday.
The two suspects were brought into the press conference wearing orange prison suits and balaclavas.
Indonesia has notoriously strict drug laws.
Bali nine members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were last year executed in Indonesia for their role in a heroin smuggling operation from Bali to Australia.
Mr Fox was the head of Reuters' Indonesia bureau when he was sacked in 2011 after he made an off-colour joke about women's pubic hair in an internal online chat room.
He was on a temporary assignment in Japan covering the Fukushima nuclear disaster at the time.
His sacking was condemned by many commentators, who claimed it was an overreaction on Reuters' part to Mr Fox displaying gallows humour typically employed by journalists covering difficult stories.
At the time his former wife, author Elizabeth Pisani, wrote in a blog that she was proud to have spent 10 years living with Mr Fox.
"His determination to give a voice to the men, women and children who are the pawns of conflicts not of their making definitely took a toll on our marriage," she wrote on her website wisdomofwhores.com
"I learned to recognise the lock-down mood that followed yet another assignment in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Iraq, Albania, Afghanistan."
However Ms Pisani wrote she never failed to be moved by the stories Mr Fox filed for Reuters.
Mr Fox says on his Facebook page he is from Bulawayo in Zimbabwe and lives in Sanur in Bali.
On his LinkedIn account, Mr Fox describes himself as a consultant.
"After two decades as a frontline reporter, editor, bureau chief and senior country officer for Thomson Reuters I have swapped the bunkers of conflicts for the more sedate bunkers of some of Asia's finest golf courses," he wrote.
