slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2008
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Lucy Wright is due to give birth to her first child on 12 May. Yet just last month, at a time when some prospective parents might be busy painting the nursery, she was making plans to give up her baby within weeks, if not days, of the birth.
Had a high court judge made a different decision on 20 March, Wright, 29, would have been put on a plane to Argentina and sent to serve up to 16 years in jail for trying to smuggle just over 6kg of cocaine from Buenos Aires to London.
Her child would have been brought up by one of her younger sisters. "I thought I'd be sent back," Wright said in an interview in London . "I had admitted what I had done."
But Mr Justice Silber decided she should not be extradited, despite acknowledging that she had confessed to "an extremely grave crime". She should be allowed to stay in Britain, he said, because there was a "real risk" her human rights would be violated in an Argentinian jail.
"It seems clear in this case that the abuses which the appellant would suffer in Argentina are so widespread and systematic that there is a real risk of article 3 mistreatment," Silber said in his judgment. Article 3 of the European convention on human rights prohibits torture, and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".
But Wright's wait is not over. The Crown Prosecution Service is yet to decide whether to press charges against her in this country. Conspiring to import that much cocaine carries a tariff of anything up to life imprisonment.
How did a middle-class woman from Bolton end up agreeing to act as a drug mule – only to get caught, spend time in a Buenos Aires jail, then make a daring escape that involved wading and swimming across a river in the dead of night?
"It took me four hours and I came out covered in mud," Wright said of her border crossing. "I know it sounds insane now, but at the time I was just doing the only thing I could think of at the time. I was on autopilot. I could either give up or cross the river. That was my choice. I chose to cross the river."
cont at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/03/pregnant-british-drug-mule-escape?newsfeed=true
Had a high court judge made a different decision on 20 March, Wright, 29, would have been put on a plane to Argentina and sent to serve up to 16 years in jail for trying to smuggle just over 6kg of cocaine from Buenos Aires to London.
Her child would have been brought up by one of her younger sisters. "I thought I'd be sent back," Wright said in an interview in London . "I had admitted what I had done."
But Mr Justice Silber decided she should not be extradited, despite acknowledging that she had confessed to "an extremely grave crime". She should be allowed to stay in Britain, he said, because there was a "real risk" her human rights would be violated in an Argentinian jail.
"It seems clear in this case that the abuses which the appellant would suffer in Argentina are so widespread and systematic that there is a real risk of article 3 mistreatment," Silber said in his judgment. Article 3 of the European convention on human rights prohibits torture, and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".
But Wright's wait is not over. The Crown Prosecution Service is yet to decide whether to press charges against her in this country. Conspiring to import that much cocaine carries a tariff of anything up to life imprisonment.
How did a middle-class woman from Bolton end up agreeing to act as a drug mule – only to get caught, spend time in a Buenos Aires jail, then make a daring escape that involved wading and swimming across a river in the dead of night?
"It took me four hours and I came out covered in mud," Wright said of her border crossing. "I know it sounds insane now, but at the time I was just doing the only thing I could think of at the time. I was on autopilot. I could either give up or cross the river. That was my choice. I chose to cross the river."
cont at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/03/pregnant-british-drug-mule-escape?newsfeed=true
