Laura Plummer, Tourist Who Smuggled Painkillers Into Egypt, Sentenced To Prison

A British woman was sentenced to three years in prison in Egypt on Tuesday after she was convicted of possessing controlled drugs and was awarded a fine equivalent of $5,611 by an Egyptian court.

Laura Plummer, 33, from Kingston upon Hull, was arrested at Hurghada airport in Hurghada, a city in the Red Sea Governorate of Egypt after police reportedly seized almost 300 tablets of tramadol from her suitcase.

In her statement to the police, Plummer said she had brought the painkillers for her Egyptian husband who had a chronic backache. She also said that she visited her husband about four times a year. Although tramadol is a legal drug in some other parts of the world, it could only be prescribed by medical professionals in Egypt and was said to be often obtained illegally.

Plummer, a shop assistant from Hull was charged with drug possession and smuggling. In her trial that started Monday, her lawyer claimed that she misunderstood a question in court and gave a response that seemed to be a confession. The mix-up happened after the court declined to use an interpreter appointed by Plummer’s defense team and instead called on a member of the bench to translate.

Lawyers also argued that the drug was not listed as illegal in the U.K. travel advisory.

“For someone to be found guilty of drug smuggling they have to be aware that they are possessing narcotics,” Plummer’s lawyer, Mohamed Othman, told Reuters. “Laura did not know that what she was carrying was a narcotic. This is pursuant to that tramadol 50mg is a painkiller in her country, England. When she brought the tramadol, she believed it was a painkiller.”

The Guardian reported that British diplomats were unable to intervene until after Plummer was sentenced. However, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson assured Karl Turner, a member of parliament from Hull, that he would continue to do everything he could to help her and her family, the report stated.

Turner, meanwhile, said Plummer’s sentence was a “massive blow” to her family and added it was clear that the “decent, honest and hardworking Hull woman” was not a drug trafficker and would not have realized the dangers of taking the painkillers into Egypt.

“Now that the judicial process has completed, I have no doubt that Foreign Office ministers will be making representations to their Egyptian ministerial counterparts to see what can be done to bring this shocking saga to an end,” he said. “Laura’s defense team are currently considering whether they should appeal and they have 60 days to lodge that appeal. I’m hoping good sense will finally prevail.”

Turner also requested for Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt push for Plummer to be transferred to a prison in Cairo instead of the one in Qena where she was sent to, so family visits could be made easier.

“It will take a while and she has to go back to the prison,” Roberta Synclair, Plummer’s mother, said while talking about plans for appealing the sentence.

“It’s not fair,” she added. “I was worried about her staying in the police custody; now she will be in the prison with criminal people.”