Cannabis smuggler gets six years

A South African woman who smuggled €100,000 worth of cannabis into Dublin Airport allegedly to raise money for an eye operation for her mother, has been jailed for six years by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Charlene Smith (21), from Pretoria, South Africa, pleaded guilty to smuggling 40 kg of cannabis herb, worth €100,000 and enough to roll 152,000 "joints", into Dublin Airport on September 16, 2000.

Judge Frank O'Donnell said he hoped "the message was not reaching South Africa that four years is the going rate" for smuggling drugs into Ireland. Following her arrest Smith had said she would be "very unhappy if she got more than four years."

She told Sergeant Martin Halpin she was to receive 25,000 Rand for the job and she agreed in order to pay for her mother's eye surgery.

She also spoke of several tragedies she had recently endured in her young life including the death of her father and the suicide of her boyfriend.

Judge Frank O'Donnell said the sympathy he felt for Smith as young woman under arrest in a foreign country was tempered by sympathy he felt for victims of drug abuse who appear in front of him everyday.

His sympathy was also undermined by several "irreconcileable differences" that appeared in Smith's statement to Sgt Halpin and what she said in subsequent psychiatric evaluations.

Judge O'Donnell said it now appeared it was not her boyfriend who committed suicide, rather, it was a friend of the boyfriend. She had also said in evaluation that by raising the money for her mother's operation, she wanted to demonstrate she "could be someone and do something."

While this was understandable, Judge O'Donnell said, it also showed her motive was more than simply paying for the operation - it was also a way to accentuate her own importance to her mother.

He also noted Smith told the evaluating doctor she had not committed a crime, she had only intended to do so and had been stopped. This was not the case, Judge O'Donnell said.

Sgt Halpin told the court Smith had been in the country earlier with someone else to collect money for drugs.

He said she had become involved with Nigerians in Pretoria who offered her the "job" of a mule.