Laos allows British convict to be transferred home (Roundup)

Aug 6, 2009, 14:21 GMT

Vientiane, Laos - Lao and British authorities on Thursday signed documents paving the way for a pregnant British national to be transferred from a Lao jail to Britain to serve out her life sentence for drug trafficking.

The memorandum on prisoner transfer was the final obstacle overcome in joint efforts by the governments of communist Laos and Britain to expedite the prison transfer of British national Samantha Orobator, 20, who is nearly eight months pregnant.

British Ambassador to Laos Quinton Quale and Lao Deputy Director- General of the Consular Department Bounliep Houngvongsone signed the memorandum.

'Samantha's transfer today will ensure that she can give birth in the UK, close to her relatives and under UK medical care,' Quale said after the signing.

Orobator was scheduled to depart Vientiane on a 9:45 pm (1445 GMT) flight.

The British national was sentenced to life imprisonment last month for heroin trafficking in Laos. The maximum penalty for the offence in Laos is death by firing squad, but Orobator's sentence was commuted to life because she is pregnant.

Orobator was arrested while boarding a plane in Vientiane in August 2008 with 680 grams of heroin hidden beneath her clothes.

Her pregnancy prompted an investigation and delayed her trial, as it occurred when she was held in the prison's all-women section.

Orobator later told Lao investigators that she had been impregnated by British national John Watson, who smuggled his sperm to her in a syringe. Watson is also in jail on drug trafficking charges.

The high-profile case prompted Laos and Britain to push through a prison transfer agreement on May 7, and later sign a memorandum of understanding to speed up the process to get Orobator out of Laos before she enters the eighth month of her pregnancy, at which stage plane travel becomes risky.

Diplomats in Vientiane praised the Lao government's handling of the Orobator case, noting that it could have easily snowballed into bad publicity for the regime.

'Actually the policy of the Lao government is very humanitarian,' Lao Foreign Ministry spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing.

Although the penal code calls for the death sentence for drug trafficking, to date there has been no execution in Laos for the offence.

Watson was sentenced to death for trafficking in methamphetamines five years ago but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Lao president last year, Khenthong said.

Watson was expected to be transferred to a British prison at a later date. Khenthong denied press reports that Watson was in poor health.

'From what I've heard he does not have any health problems, but of course a prison in a least-developed country is not the paradise it is in a developed country,' the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Quale after the signing, however, expressed concern for Watson's health.

'We continue to work for the early transfer of John Watson, the other British prisoner held in Laos, who has indicated that he wishes to serve his sentence in the UK'' he said.

The Orobator case is likely set the tone for whether other prisoners held in Lao jails might benefit from prison transfer agreements.

'According to the agreement signed by the two countries, she should serve her sentence there (in Britain), because we cannot allow drug traffickers to be free from the acts they commit,' Khenthong said. 'We should set this case as an example.'

Laos - a landlocked country surrounded by Myanmar to its west, Thailand to the south, Cambodia and Vietnam to the east and China to the north - has become a transit spot for drugs and other illicit goods in the region.

Drug trafficking has led to more arrests of foreigners, including two Nigerian nationals nabbed last month, sources said.

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, 2008.