A former police community support officer who admitted drug-smuggling in a South East Asian court has escaped the death penalty.

Andrea Waldeck, 43, who used to live in Rustington, near Littlehampton, appeared before Surabaya District Court yesterday to be told that prosecutors were seeking a 16-year prison term and a fine of around £100,000.

The former PCSO had previously pleaded guilty to trafficking drugs worth more than £3,000 into Indonesia’s second-largest city.

Waldeck, who worked for Gloucestershire Police until February 2012, could have faced the death penalty.

She was arrested in April after authorities found 52oz of methamphetamine crystals in her underwear at her hotel room in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province.

Waldeck said she was asked by her boyfriend, who lives in China, to take the drugs to a man in Indonesia.

In a Facebook profile which appears to have been set up by Waldeck in July, she said: “My new, very private profile for the friends and family I love and miss so much.

“Your support means the world to me. I’m so very sorry I’ve disappointed you all.”

In another message posted on July 12, she said: “Can’t change myname or delete [pictures] from this phone or answer messages individually but only my [Facebook] friends can see this.

“Please don’t worry this is Indonesia and some have prison staff as friends.”

Waldeck, whose trial started in September, made no comment during yesterday’s court appearance.

Her lawyer said the sentence requested by prosecutors was too long because she was not a drug dealer.

Waldeck’s trial is scheduled to resume on January 6, when her lawyers will make their final submissions.

More than 140 people are on death row in Indonesia for drug crimes, a third of them foreigners.

In August, grandmother Lindsay Sandiford, from Gloucestershire, lost her appeal against a death sentence for trafficking drugs into the resort island of Bali.

A three-judge panel at the Supreme Court in Jakarta unanimously rejected her appeal after agreeing with the decision taken by Bali’s Denpasar district court.