June 3, 2009
This case is plain bizarre and the biggest mystery has yet to be solved. Samantha Orobator, 20, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for attempting to smuggle heroin out of Laos into Thailand. She was born in Nigeria and then moved with her family to London. Her mother said she had no history of drugs and didn’t know her daughter was in jail until January. Orobator was arrested and incarcerated in August.
I first heard of her last month when she was due to go on trial with a possible sentence of death by firing squad. This is where the case gets weird. She’s five months pregnant. And allegedly was pregnant when she was arrested and subsequently lost the fetus. It must be a coed jail with some form of contact because according to “a newspaper run by the Lao government” she impregnated herself with a fellow prisoner’s sperm. She insisted to her mother that she was not raped and that the father is not a prison official.
What else is she going to say facing life in prison?
No matter how or by whom - being pregnant saved her life.
Last month she had yet to see a British lawyer and one that has flown to see her was not allowed to do so. She also had never seen a local lawyer. But a prisoner transfer agreement came out of it, which hinges on the status of her case. She has to have maxed out her case and her appeals – making the sentence final – before any transfer can take place.
And although the governments have made the deal – no one has been able to see Orobator to ask her what she wants (She communicated somehow with her mother).
2009 and a country can be refused access to their own citizen locked up in prison with nowhere to run. A pregnant woman, a continent away, who is only 20 and sentenced to life in prison.
If the trial took only three hours — how long can the appeals process be?
Source: CNN
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