A British woman was arrested in Egypt, accused of drug trafficking. She has been kept in prison for close to a month.
Laura Plummer of Hull, a shopkeeper, was arrested after she flew into Cairo, where officials found nearly 300 Tramadol tablets and Naproxen in her luggage, the BBC reports. According to Plummer’s family, the drugs were painkillers meant for her Egyptian husband, whom she visits two to four times a year, and who has a bad back.
The Foreign Office declared that it was supporting a British woman and her family after she was detained in Egypt.
Family members told news told the Sun that Plummer, 33, was detained for five hours at the airport without an interpreter. She signed a 38-page statement worded in Arabic, thinking that it would help lead to her release from custody. Instead, she has been in a cell with 25 other women. Authorities have told her that she could face up to 25 years in prison, and even the death penalty. The painkillers she was carrying reportedly had a “street value” of £23 or $30.
Plummer’s brother, James, told the Press Association that his sister thought she was doing a “good deed” by flying the medications in to her husband. According to James, his mother and sisters had gone to Egypt to visit Plummer after her October 9 arrest, saying,
They say she’s unrecognizable. When they seen her, she’s like a zombie, they said.
James added that the family feels “helpless,” because the case is in a different country. His sister’s hair is starting to fall out from stress. “I don’t think she’s tough enough to survive it. She has a phobia of using anybody else’s toilet, so let alone sharing a toilet and a floor with everybody else. That will be awful for her, it’ll be traumatizing.”
Roberta Sinclair, Plummer’s mother, said, “She had no idea she was doing anything wrong. The painkillers were placed at the top of her suitcase, she wasn’t hiding them.”
