Samantha Orobator: Life sentence for smuggling

EFFORTS will begin today to secure the release from an Asian prison of a pregnant woman with Irish-based family who was sentenced to life yesterday for drug smuggling.

Samantha Orobator, 20, who is six months pregnant, was sentenced after a trial in Laos found her guilty of smuggling 680g of heroin – an offence which normally attracts the sentence of death by firing squad.

Her Dublin-based mother, Jane Orobator, a student at Trinity College who has insisted Samantha would not have willingly attempted to ship the drugs, was in court to see her daughter sentenced and was described afterwards as devastated.