UK News
Pregnant British woman faces sentence for drug trafficking
Jun 3, 2009, 3:40 GMT
Bangkok - British national Samantha Orobator, who mysteriously managed to get pregnant while serving time in an all-female jail in Vientiane, was scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday for drug trafficking, diplomats said.
'We were notified that the sentencing will happen at 1:30 pm,' British embassy spokesman Daniel Painter said by telephone from Vientiane. 'We're optimistic that after a few false starts it will go ahead,' he said.
Orobator, 20, was arrested while boarding a plane in Vientiane last August with 680 grams of heroin allegedly hidden beneath her clothes.
In Laos, the maximum sentence for drug trafficking is death by firing squad. But under Lao law, a pregnant woman is exempt from capital punishment.
Under a hastily pushed through prisoner-swap agreement between Britain and Laos earlier this year, Orobator is expected to be flown to the UK after her sentencing to serve her jail term there.
Orobator's sentencing has been delayed by an investigation into how she was impregnated in the allegedly all-female Phongthonmg Prison.
On Tuesday, the government-run Vientiane Times suggested that Orobator had secretly impregnated herself with sperm from another prisoner, although details were not available on how such an operation could be performed in a prison.
The government has denied claims that she was raped by a guard.
'Maybe it is a baby from the sky like [the Virgin] Mary,' Lao government spokesman Kenthong Nuanthasing said in an interview last month.
Little is known about what led Orobator, a Nigerian-born British citizen described by friends as extremely bright with ambitions to become a doctor, to fly to Thailand and then to Laos where she spent five days before her arrest at Wattaya Airport on August 5 last year.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
as 'extremely bright with ambitions to become a doctor',She left school without any educational qualifications and got heavily involved with drugs. A DOCTOR! don't make me bloody laugh! (and I've 'ambitions' to become a brain surgeon).
im a mong
thisis stupid she should be shot because she injected sperm into herself from another inmate it was just a plan to get out of dieing
it also says the wanted to b a doctor so she may hv know how to pregnate herself
im smell like a hobo
Omg what on earth, this is a geogrpahy lesson you muff heads.:L
i still smell
havent you got something bettrer to do than comment ona druggy pregnant woman/.
The article fails to mention that she had travelled from Amsterdam, notorious for drugs, then went to the Golden Triangle. Her father is in Nigeria, her mother is in Irelenad, how come sje is British? I have no sympathy for drug runners. Read Sandra Gregory's book! Pleaded not guilty and said she was convicted in Bangkok after an unfair trial. In her book she admits she was as guilty as sin. Again, no sympathy for her, and she even made money out of her story.
If all these mules are innocent why aren't more of us travellers stopped and arrested? I pass through Thailand,The Philipinnes, Laos, Cambofdia, Vietnam, many European countries nut never get stopped. People get caught because they are carrying.
The message is simple 'Don;t do it!'
If she did inject herself with sperm - she may be exposing herself to a life sentence of another kind - HIV. My heart goes out to her mother, and to the rest of her family and friends.
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SHOOT THE BITCHJun 3rd, 2009 - 08:50:29
She's not only cunning and devious but she's as guilty as sin!
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