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.

Ms Orobator, who is from Nigeria, has been living in Ireland with Samantha’s three younger sisters for the past six years while Samantha lived with an aunt in London. The family have been receiving support from British human rights group, Reprieve, which has been monitoring the case.

“We spoke with Jane very briefly after the hearing and she is distraught,” said Reprieve’s London-based press officer, Katherine O’Shea. “She is being chaperoned by [British] Foreign Office officials and they had hoped to speak with Samantha but they weren’t allowed. They’re hoping they will be allowed in to see her tomorrow to see what the next step should be.”

Samantha has two options open to her – she can appeal her conviction and sentence or she can waive her right to appeal and apply instead to be returned to Britain under a recently reached agreement on prisoner transfer between Britain and Laos.

If her appeal was successful, she would walk away a free woman but if it failed, she could spend years in the notorious Phonthong Prison where conditions are primitive and prisoners regularly endure violence, illness and hunger.

If she applies to be transferred to Britain – a process that could take several months – she would have to serve a prison sentence but would be able to care for her baby behind bars.

It is not clear how Samantha became pregnant several months after her arrest last August and subsequent detention in the all-female jail. Authorities in Laos have claimed she deliberately arranged to artificially inseminate herself with the help of other prisoners’ contacts as pregnant women can not be executed under local law.