Malaysia grants reprieve to Australian 'love scam' drug mule

An Australian woman given the death penalty in Malaysia for drug smuggling has had the sentence overturned.

Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, 55, was arrested at a Kuala Lumpur airport in 2014 after she was found carrying 1.1kg (2.4lbs) of crystal methamphetamine.

She has always maintained she was tricked into carrying the drugs after falling for an online romance scam.

Malaysia's highest court has now accepted her appeal and she is expected to be released soon.

'An eye opener for judges'

Ms Exposto has always said she believed she had developed a genuine online relationship with a US soldier serving in Afghanistan, who she knew as Capt Daniel Smith. She received regular photos, videos and emails, which were in reality being sent by fraudsters.

She said that in 2014 she was instructed to go to Shanghai, to sign papers which would enable them to get married. When she left China, a friend of "Capt Smith" asked her to take some Christmas presents back to Australia.

She was transiting through Kuala Lumpur when she handed over her bag for screening and customs officials found the drugs sewn into the lining of her luggage.

Her defence has always insisted a knowingly guilty person would never have volunteered for screening.

After three years in prison, she was found not guilty of drug trafficking in December 2017, with the court accepting her argument that she had been unaware of the presence of drugs in her luggage.

That was later overturned and she was sentenced to death. She spent 18 months on death row before the Federal Court in Putrajaya accepted her appeal on Tuesday.

"The appeal is allowed. The appellant is freed and discharged," said chief justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat.

Her lawyer, Shafee Abdullah, told reporters at the court the ruling would have "a high impact".

"It will be an eye opener for judges... This is an illustration, how an innocent woman can be scammed on the internet," Reuters quoted him as saying.

Anyone found in possession of at least 50g (1.75oz) of crystal meth is considered a trafficker in Malaysia.

Three Australians have been put to death for drug offences in Malaysia: Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers in 1986, and Michael McAuliffe in 1993.

Malaysia is currently not carrying out any executions, while it debates scrapping mandatory death sentences for certain crimes altogether.

Source: bbc.com, Staff, November 26, 2019

Sydney woman Maria Exposto has drug conviction and death sentence overturned in Malaysia

Exposto was initially found to be an unwitting drug mule, but prosecutors appealed and she was sentenced to death last year

Sydney grandmother Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto has won her appeal against a death sentence for drug trafficking in Malaysia and will be freed after nearly 5 years in jail and 18 months on death row.

Her appeal for trafficking more than 1kg of crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice, through Kuala Lumpur airport in December 2014, was heard in Malaysia’s court of final appeal on Tuesday.

Chief justice of Malaysia Tengku Maimun Binti Tuan Mat delivered the finding, overturning her conviction and ordering her release. Exposto was led from the court still shackled.

Exposto’s long-running case had won global sympathy after judges heard how she was set up through a love scam online.

The 55-year-old grandmother from Cabramatta West in Sydney was initially found not guilty in a lower court after it heard how she was set up in an online boyfriend scam by a man who identified himself as “Captain Daniel Smith”, a US soldier stationed in Afghanistan.

They arranged to meet in Shanghai, where he claimed he was to lodge documents for his retirement from the military, but he never turned up.

Instead, Exposto was befriended by a stranger. She testified that he had asked her to take a black backpack, which she thought contained only clothes, to Melbourne.

During a stopover in Kuala Lumpur customs officers noticed irregular stitching inside the backpack and found packages of ice hidden inside the lining of the bag.

She was charged, and while the lower court initially believed she had been an unwitting drug mule, prosecutors appealed and won and she was sentenced to death early last year.

Her final appeal against that sentence had been complicated by changes in laws governing executions.

There is currently a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in Malaysia as legislation is pending that will remove mandatory death penalties for traffickers and give judges greater discretion in sentencing.

Exposto’s lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told the court of final appeal on Tuesday that his client was so naive about drugs that when customs officers told her they’d found ice in the bag she was carrying she said it couldn’t be because “it would have melted”. He’d earlier described her conviction as “perverse”.

But prosecutors argued “love sickness” was not a defence for drug trafficking and she could not appeal to naiveté. “Ignorance is not a defence.”

Following the quashing of her conviction, Exposto said in a statement: “I thank God and my lawyers for my freedom after almost five painful years in jail”.

Her son, Hugo Pinto Exposto, told reporters outside court she had missed “a lot of precious moments”.

“It’ll be overwhelming for her to come back home. All I want to do is just take her home, take her away, and just catch her up on all the things she’s missed.”

Harsh and mandatory penalties for drug trafficking were introduced in south-east Asia after intense lobbying by the United States amid its war on drugs and a strategy to curb heroine and opium smuggling out of the notorious Golden Triangle in the 1970s and 1980s.

Among those caught in the crackdown on narcotics were Australian drug traffickers Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers, who became the 1st westerners sent to the Malaysian gallows, in 1986.

Source: The Guardian, Staff, November 26, 2019

Australian wins death sentence appeal in Malaysia, walks free

An Australian grandmother who claimed she was tricked into carrying drugs into Malaysia after falling for an online romance scam Tuesday won her final appeal against the death penalty and will be freed.

Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, originally from the Philippines, was arrested in Dec 2014 while in transit at Kuala Lumpur International Airport with 1.1 kilos of crystal methamphetamine stitched into the compartment of a backpack she was carrying.

She was initially cleared of trafficking after a judge ruled in 2017 she did not know she was transporting the drugs, but the acquittal was overturned after prosecutors appealed and she was handed a death sentence.

Capital punishment is mandatory in Malaysia for anyone convicted of trafficking certain amounts of some controlled substances.

But the Federal Court in Putrajaya, the final court of appeal, overturned that decision and ordered her release.

“The appeal is allowed. The appellant is freed and discharged,” said chief justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat.

The mother of 4, who was stopped in Malaysia while heading to Australia, had claimed she was fooled into carrying the bag after travelling to China to see someone she met online called “Captain Daniel Smith“, who claimed to be a US serviceman.

Source: New Straits Times, Staff, November 26, 2019

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