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Laura Plummer 'jailed for three years for smuggling tramadol into Egypt'

Kaden_Nite

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The Guardian | Tue 26 Dec 17 23.00 AEDT




A British woman accused of smuggling drugs into Egypt has been jailed for three years, her family has said.


Laura Plummer, 33, from Hull, was arrested after she was found to be carrying 290 tramadol tablets in her suitcase, a painkiller which is legal in the UK but which is banned in Egypt.

Plummer's family, who have described her as naive, said she was taking the tablets for her Egyptian partner, Omar Caboo, who suffers from severe back pain.

According to a Facebook group set up by her family, she appeared in court in Egypt on Boxing Day and was jailed for three years. The family said her lawyers lodged an immediate appeal.

Plummer's sister Rachel said their mother was devastated by the sentence. She said the family were trying to find out more details about what happened in the courtroom on Tuesday.

She said: My mum's obviously devastated. She's out there by herself. She added that she did not know whether the appeal would be heard on Tuesday.

She said: We're just hoping. Even half of that would be better. Anything less than three years. She doesn't deserve that.

Plummer appeared in court on Christmas Day but the judge adjourned the case for a day because of her condition, her sister said.

Their mother, Roberta Sinclair, travelled to Egypt for the hearings. The family have previously said Plummer had no idea what she was doing was illegal and she was just daft

They said she did not try to hide the medicine, which she had been given by a friend, and she thought it was a joke when she was pulled over by officials after arriving for a holiday with her partner.

Sinclair said her daughter was being held in terrible conditions in a communal cell with no beds, sharing with up to 25 other women. Plummer is being held in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, where she was arrested at the airport on 9 October.

Her family had been told that she could face up to 25 years in jail, with one lawyer even mentioning the death penalty.
 
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All I can say is it pays to check out the drugs laws of any countries you're planning to travel to with a stash of drugs in your case.
 
Why do these articles keep saying tramadol is legal in the UK? You can get it on prescription, but you only get 290 on the black market; which she did.

Either she knew, her boyfriend knew, or both. Very strange situation - very sad as well of course. Hopefully her sentence is reduced.
 
She knew she was in the wrong, as did the court. Obviously I don't want to see her with a long sentence, but pleading ignorance won't wash.
 
Hardly a drug worth smuggling. That said drug mules have to be horribly desperate to risk so much for so little
 
Hardly a drug worth smuggling.

The global market for illicit tramadol is actually enormous:

U.N. World Drug Report 2017 said:
Although overall quantities of pharmaceutical opioids seized decreased in 2015, they were still larger than global heroin seizures and remained very high compared with the quantities intercepted before the peak of 2014. In 2015, pharmaceutical opioid seizures were dominated by tramadol, which, in terms of weight, increased more than fourfold from the level of the previous year. The largest seizures of pharmaceutical opioids in 2015 were reported in Africa, most notably in West and Central Africa, where large amounts of tramadol were seized, whereas most of the tramadol seized in the previous year was seized in countries in the Near and Middle East.
 
British woman jailed over painkillers is freed from Egyptian prison
Ruth Michaelson
The Guardian
January 28th, 2019

A British woman jailed in Egypt for possession of the opioid painkiller tramadol has been granted early release after 13 months behind bars.

Laura Plummer, now 34, was sentenced to three years in prison on Boxing Day 2017 for drug possession after she was stopped at Hurghada airport in October that year with 290 tramadol tablets in her suitcase.

The retail worker from Hull maintained that she was unaware the drug was a controlled substance in Egypt and said she was bringing the tablets into the country to help her partner's back pain.

Plummer initially faced the more serious charge of drug trafficking, which carries a sentence of up to 25 years in prison or even the death penalty. After translation issues during one trial session, which led her to mistakenly plead guilty to the trafficking charge, she was later given three years in Egypt's Qanatar women's prison for possession of a controlled substance.

On 25 January, the anniversary of Egypt's 2011 revolution, Plummer was one of 6,925 prisoners granted early release by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. She was then transferred to police custody in the Egyptian resort town of Hurghada, awaiting a flight home with her mother and sister.

Read the full story here.
 
The global market for illicit tramadol is actually enormous:
that's wild. i love opiates, but might not even bother picking up a free bottle of tramadol off the ground. it's got a significant bothersome stimulant effect. not at all like the effect people are describing when they talk about oxycodone. a dysphoric stimulation.

sucks for laura. hope she gets out sooner than later.

edit: oh, just read the post above. glad she?s free. human life.
 
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