Dublin-based mother pleads for release of daughter facing execution

THE DUBLIN-based mother of a pregnant British woman who faces execution by firing squad if convicted of drug smuggling in Laos has appealed for her daughter’s release.

Jane Orobator (40), a student at Trinity College Dublin, said her 20-year-old daughter Samantha Orobator, from London, has been in jail since last August after she was allegedly caught with 680 grammes of heroin by customs officers at the country’s Wattay airport.

In Laos, smuggling more than 500 grammes of heroin carries a mandatory death sentence.

Ms Orobator, who lives with her other three daughters in Castleknock, Dublin, said she had no idea why her daughter was in Laos last summer and was shocked to hear of her arrest in late September.

She said the case is totally out of character for her daughter, whom she described as a quiet, shy, small-built girl who looks like a young teenager.

“I’m just down on my knees. They should please have mercy,” she told Sky News yesterday. “No one has been allowed to see her; she has no legal representative.”

Ms Orobator, who is studying to be a psychiatric nurse, appealed to the British government to intercede with the Laotian authorities on her daughter’s behalf.

“I just want them to bring her back to me. I’m really terrified. I have been crying my eyes out.”

British legal charity Reprieve said Samantha, who fell pregnant in December while in Phonthong prison, could face trial next week and, if found guilty, could be executed.

Anna Morris, a lawyer from the charity, travelled to the southeastern Asian country yesterday, having received permission to meet Samantha today.

Britain’s vice-consul from the embassy in neighbouring Thailand is scheduled to go today to the prison in Laos where Samantha Orobator is being held, a British foreign office spokeswoman said yesterday.

Officials in the foreign office had not been able to establish when a trial would take place, the spokeswoman added.

Bill Rammell, a junior minister in the foreign office, would raise the issue of Samantha’s detention in a meeting with the Laotian deputy prime minister next week, she said.

When Ms Orobator moved to Dublin eight years ago, she left Samantha in London to live with her aunt. She last saw her daughter at Christmas 2007 and last heard from her in July when she was on holiday in Holland with friends. (Additional reporting by PA)