Pregnant Briton Samantha Orobator escapes death penalty

[David_Loves_Ubonwan]

Drug convict: Briton is my baby's father
Pregnant smuggler spared death sentence in Laos claims fellow prisoner acted as sperm donor

The pregnant British woman jailed for life in Laos for smuggling drugs has told the authorities that the man who saved her from the death sentence by fathering her baby is a fellow British prisoner, John Watson.

Diplomatic efforts are under way to fast-track the return of Watson, 47, who is also serving a life sentence for drug smuggling, and Samantha Orobator, 20, to serve out their sentences in UK jails.

Orobator pleaded guilty on Wednesday in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, to trying to smuggle heroin out of the country, but her death sentence was commuted because she is pregnant.

Watson's mother, Pat, has said that he is "ecstatic" at becoming a father again - he has two children by an ex-fiancee in the UK - but that he is denying to the prison authorities that he is the father of Orobator's child.

His mobile phone has been confiscated by officials at the squalid Phonthong prison in Vientiane, where the pair are being held, and he could face further sanctions from the authorities if he was proven to have helped Orobator.

Orobator, from London, has been held in Phonthong since she was arrested at Wattay international airport on 5 August last year. She conceived in late December and said the father was a Buddhist monk, before claiming that she had inseminated herself using Watson's sperm. A syringe was found among her belongings.

Speaking from her home in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Mrs Watson said her son and Orobator were "close" and in a relationship. "John emailed me a few months ago and said, 'How would you feel about being a grandma again?'

"At first I thought he was joking, but then he rang me and he sounded ecstatic. He told me he'd met a girl and she was having his baby.

"John has been looking after Samantha and they've spent a lot of time together. They've become really close. Men and women are in separate cells, but they are mixed in the yard and the other parts of the prison, so they've managed to forge a relationship.

"It was the happiest I'd heard him sound for years - I think he thought they could be a family."

Building plans of the jail show that in one blockhouse there are male and female cells next to each other.

Although the UK and Laos signed a prisoner transfer agreement last month, it does not come into force for months, so Orobator faces having her first baby in the jail. However, she was being visited by a doctor this weekend and her supporters hope she will be certified fit to fly sooner. She is said to be worried that the prison diet will harm her baby and was described by her mother, Jane, as "very fragile".

Caroline Morten, of human rights group Reprieve, said: "She's just into her third trimester now and needs to be given a doctor's approval to fly, but we are hoping to get her back in a week. At the moment we don't want to talk too much about what's going on, but we are optimistic."

Watson was arrested in 2003 and given a life sentence in 2006. His health has deteriorated in jail and he is said to suffer from depression. He has been denied visits from anyone except officials from the Australian embassy, who are able to meet him once a month, and he is able to send occasional emails home. The UK has no consulate in Laos.

"I know it sounds like an old cliche," Watson said last year to the Foreign Prisoner Support Service, an online campaigning group based in Australia, "but honestly, being in here, I do truly believe now that you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Last year he was "utterly distraught" when another British prisoner whom he had befriended fell ill and died. Michael Newman, a 43-year-old businessman, had been refused medical attention and was found dead in his cell. In 2001 a French man also died at Phonthong of an untreated medical condition.

A spokesman from the Foreign Office said: "We are working on the goodwill of the Laotian government to repatriate Ms Orobator as soon as possible and Mr Watson would of course benefit from that too in making an application."


Source: The Guardian

David

[InterestedGuy08]

So she had a relationship with a fellow prisoner and fellow British citizen after all? And all this time some were making it out as if she was raped and completely innocent of all charges. The drama continues.

[yeows]

It's amazing what one can do to save one's own skin. Basically she does not want to face the music. Tbh, I have no respect for this sort of people.

[Betti]

I would still say it is a possibility that she is just saying what the Lao want her to say as she is trying to get out of there.

[David_Loves_Ubonwan]

£42,000 fine for Briton jailed on Lao drug charge

HANOI (AFP) — A pregnant Londoner who sentenced to life in prison in Laos for drug trafficking earlier this month, was also fined more than 42,000 pounds, a Lao government spokesman said on Tuesday.

A panel of judges found Samantha Orobator, 20, guilty of trafficking 680 grams (1.5 pounds) of heroin last August, when she was caught trying to board a plane to Thailand.

Government spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing told AFP on Tuesday that Orobator had also been fined 600,000,000 kip, or 42,740 pounds at her trial on June 3.

"According to the verdict, she has to pay," Khenthong said, adding that Orobator had not yet produced the money and he did not know if she could.

Normally, anyone found with more than 500 grams of heroin faces the death penalty.

But Lao Deputy Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith assured Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell during a May meeting in London that a pregnant woman would not receive the death sentence, according to Rammell.

Rammell said that if Orobator were convicted, authorities had said she could serve her sentence back home under a newly signed prisoner transfer agreement.

British consular officials have visited Orobator since her sentencing, an embassy spokesman in Bangkok said on Tuesday.

"We're working on trying to get the transfer agreement activated as soon as possible," the spokesman said.

British legal charity Reprieve, which earlier sent a representative to Laos in a bid to assist her, has said she is due to give birth in September.

Source: AFP

David

[JayTee]

No one should be sentenced to death for drug smuggling period. It's terrible.

I used to live along the border with Laos, right across the Mekong River. This was like 23 years ago. In the dry season you could practically walk across. One day some forong did just swim across. An American, I think. They were arrested on the other side in just their bathing suit and were in jail for a week while the embassies worked things out.

Oh, I see, she's being transferred. Great. I don't blame her for getting pregnant, whether it was for love or to help her case. If one is facing death for drug smuggling that's too high a penalty for that crime. So she worked the system. I approve.

[LousieMesser]

This has got to be the weirdest case I have ever come across. At first, they made it sound like funny business with her pregnancy. At that point, I was really pissed at the phrasing "fell pregnant". Then when it came out it was with a fellow prisoner and probably consensual, I was mad at her.

In the end, I am still unsure what happened. Did she play the system to get out of the death penalty? or Is she saying what they are telling her to say to avoid repercussions?

We may never know the truth.

[David_Loves_Ubonwan]

On appeal in the UK her "life sentence" was changed to a minimum term of 18 months.

Source: http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup...method=boolean

David

[mikeheart]

In my opinion that is a travesty. To have a mandatorty deat penaly changed to life is acceptacle but to go through the foramilities to be inprisoned here and then to be given only 18 months is wrong. Dealing in drugs is dealing in death and should be treated as such.