Student jailed for mountain strip ‘happy to be home’

The British woman jailed for stripping on a sacred Malaysian mountain has apologised for causing offence.

Eleanor Hawkins appeared tearful as she read a statement outside her family home in Draycott, Derbyshire.

She said: “I just want to say how relieved and happy I am to finally be home.

“I know my behaviour was foolish and I know how much offence we all caused to the local people of Sabah. For that, I am truly sorry.”

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It brings to an end an arduous 10 days for the aeronautical engineering graduate, who was fined 5,000 Malaysian ringgit (€1,184) and sentenced to three days in jail — which she had already served — at a court hearing in Kota Kinabalu on Friday.

The 23-year-old arrived back in the UK yesterday.

Hawkins was arrested with three other backpackers earlier this week for posing naked on Mount Kinabalu, after being blamed by locals for causing a magnitude-5.9 earthquake struck the 4km-high mountain on June 5, killing 18 people and leaving hundreds more stranded.

Sabah state deputy chief minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan later blamed the quake on the travellers showing “disrespect to the sacred mountain”.