Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto is a fifty-four year old Australian grandmother who has just been sentenced to death by hanging by a Malaysian appeals court. Her crime was having 1.5 kilogram of methamphetamine detected in her luggage when she passed through Kuala Lumpur airport in 2014.
Malaysia has strict narcotics laws and in the past it has not hesitated to execute lawbreakers. It has just undergone a change of government for the first time since independence from Britain sixty-one years ago. It is too early to determine what changes are likely to the Malaysian criminal justice system as this new government decides its policies.
Unfortunately, Ms Exposto has fallen into a trap which is common in the high profit drug trade. The wonderful world of computers enable those looking for romance to correspond with others across the world and she was persuaded to travel to China to meet such a friend face to face. The meeting went so well that she was given presents to bring back for her family and unfortunately she was duped into transporting narcotics concealed in the suitcase in which they were packed.
Strangely, her arrest was pure bad luck. When she arrived in Kuala Lumpur on a flight from China she was a transit passenger going on to Australia and there was no requirement for her baggage to pass customs. Because she misread a sign she entered the customs area and presented her baggage for a search - and that mistake could result in her life ending.
Her first court appearance had a happy ending. The judge found that she was an innocent woman who had been duped and acquitted her of the charges, but the state lodged an appeal with the appeals court and that has reversed that decision and imposed the death penalty. That will be subjected to a further appeal, but the final decision could go either way.
The narcotics trade has used what they call " mules " for transporting drugs through the customs barriers for a long time. In some cases the drugs are hidden in body cavities or even swallowed to avoid detection and should the covering burst the mules face instant death. People undertaking this risk do it for money and the trade has progressed to duping people into becoming unwilling accomplices.
The trade now relies heavily on human frailty. Those looking for romance are specially vulnerable. Recruiters can spend months grooming a likely target and spending money is a useful tactic to gain acceptance. Drugs can be hidden in a variety of disguises but which appear to be perfectly innocent to the intended victim. This cost is negligible compared with the rewards the drugs bring in Australia.
No matter how many warning signs are displayed at airports and how many relatives warn those going overseas, affairs of the heart usually overcome common sense. Mostly the outcome from such an unfortunate encounter is a lengthy prison sentence, but in some parts of the world it can involve the death penalty.
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