Nearly one third of the 545 Australians currently imprisoned or facing charges overseas were convicted or arrested for drug-related crimes, according to the latest figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Many are in countries where conviction on drug charges may attract the death penalty.
DFAT figures on open consular cases show that as of May 24, 102 (or 41 per cent) of the 246 Australians languishing in overseas jails were convicted on drug charges, and 68 (or 23 per cent) of the 299 Australians arrested overseas were arrested on drugs charges. They come as convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby returns to Australia, having completed her sentence in an Indonesian jail.
While Corby's is perhaps the most high-profile case of an Australian facing the death penalty, a Fairfax Media analysis shows that since 1980 at least 92 Australians have been charged with crimes that attract the death penalty.
Of these, 33 were handed a death sentence, although 20 of these were later commuted to life sentences. Six have been executed, including Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran who faced a firing squad in Indonesia in 2015. One death row inmate in Thailand, Donald Tait, had his conviction overturned in 1988.
The remaining six are on death row or were on death row at last report. Three are in Thailand and Vietnam: Antonio Bagnato, convicted of murder in Thailand in February this year; and Tran Minh Dat and Pham Trung Dung, separately convicted in Vietnam in 2014 on heroin trafficking charges.
A further three on death row in China have had their sentences suspended: Henry Chhin, who was handed a the death penalty suspended for two years in 2005 and whose whereabouts is unknown; Bengali Sherrif, understood to have been given the death penalty suspended for two years in 2015; and Anthony Bannister, who received a suspended death sentence in 2015. All three were convicted for trafficking ice.
Also included in the 92 are three Australians either awaiting trial or a verdict: Peter Gardner and Ibrahim Jalloh are in China and Maria Pinto Exposto is in Malaysia. All three were arrested in separate cases in 2014, on charges of trafficking methamphetamine.
These figures, based on media reports, underestimate the true number of Australians held on charges that could attract the death penalty.
Separate numbers, obtained through freedom of information laws, hint at the sizeable gap between the two data sets. They show that since 2015, Australian Federal Police have assisted in nearly 130 foreign investigations involving more than 400 people, where a successful prosecution could potentially lead to a death sentence.
"That's an extraordinary number," said Stephen Blanks, President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties. "If that's correct then publicly-sourced information is only scratching the surface."
Amnesty International's latest report on the death penalty, released last month, highlighted the secrecy surrounding the use of capital punishment in countries such as China, Vietnam and Malaysia.
As many as a dozen Australians - including Sherrif, Bannister, Gardner and Jalloh - are believed to be held in a single city in southern China, Guangzhou, putting estimates of the number of Australians on or facing death row as high as 17.
"China keeps its grotesque use of the death penalty a 'state secret', but our research shows that thousands of people are sentenced to death and executed each year," said Amnesty International Australia's Rose Kulak.
"China executes more people than all other countries in the world put together."
In 2016, at least 1032 people were executed worldwide, excluding in China, according to the latest Amnesty International figures.
DFAT annual reports tracking statistics on Australians arrested overseas for any offence show the rate of arrest rose to its highest level in six years in 2015-16, with 15.2 arrests per 100,000 departures. The largest number of arrests were in the US (262), followed by Thailand (107) and the United Arab Emirates (100).
"DFAT has long provided clear and consistent messaging to Australians that they must respect the laws of the countries in which they work, live or travel," a departmental spokesperson said.
Mr Blanks said the death was not appropriate for any crime, for "many reasons apart from the barbarity".
"There is always the possibility that errors in the judicial process have been made. There is always the possibility that criminals can reform themselves - and the examples of the two Australians executed in Indonesia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, stand out in that regard," he said.
"In practice, the death penalty operates in a discriminatory way against those least able to defend themselves. Typically, it will be the drug mules that are caught and executed, rather than the organisers of the drug trade."
