Samantha Orobator freed from Laos
In May, we posted about 20 year old Samantha Orobator, a pregnant British woman who was jailed in Laos on drug charges - and originally sentenced to death by firing squad. (She became pregnant while in jail; her mother feared that she was raped while in prison - Orobator says she was not.)
CNN reports that Orobator will be freed to today and go to Britain to receive a sentence there.
Related: Amnesty International's Human Rights Report on Laos.
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I just sent you guys an email about this 5 minutes ago. Anyway, I'm very glad that she was sent back to Britain. I don't think this necessarily means she's "free" though because British authorities said they haven't decided what they're going to do with her yet. I think it just means she's no longer going to serve any sort of sentence in Laos.
I also find it interesting that the CNN article says that Orobator received a "life sentence" when she was really sentenced to death. How did they get that part wrong?
You're right, I should have said freed from Laos. Changing title now...
As for CNN, I think that the death sentence was later changed to life - so maybe that's how they got it.
Better she does time in a British prison than a Laotian prison - the conditions would be far better, as would the medical care and, while British prisons are racist against Black people, they are a lot less racist than the Laotian prisons are.
Glad they're moving her back to Britain. This is an unfortunate reminder of how tough some country's drug laws are and how Westerners risk getting entangled in them if they aren't careful...not unlike that Australian woman, Schapelle Corby, caught in Indonesia a few years back.
Schapelle Corby was guilty as sin.
Happy she won't be sentenced to death, but I really hope she won't be sentenced for drug use. Mainly because I don't think she deserves that after all of this, but also because I stand by my usual "drug laws are dumb and do more harm than good" belief.