20-Year-Old Pregnant Woman Faces Death by Firing Squad in Laos

[ccharles000]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/04/laos.british.woman.drugs.trial/index.html

A pregnant British woman facing possible execution in Laos will go on trial this week, the country's foreign affairs ministry said Monday.

Samantha Orobator "is facing death by firing squad for drug trafficking," said Clare Algar, executive director of Reprieve, a London-based human rights group.

Orobator, 20, was arrested on August 5, said Khenthong Nuanthasing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman.

She was alleged to have been carrying just over half a kilogram (1.1 pounds) of heroin, Reprieve lawyer Anna Morris told CNN by phone from Vientiane, the Laotian capital. "For that amount of heroin the sentence is normally the death penalty," she said.

-Amnesty International has some crucial background information on Laos and its ongoing human rights violations, mostly involving the persecution of indigenous people and censored media. On prison conditions:


Lack of access by independent human rights monitors prevented an accurate assessment of the number of political prisoners and prison conditions, but reports continued of ill-treatment, lack of food, overcrowding and inadequate medical care.

[madaboutharry]

1. I read today that execution has been taken off the table.

The fairness of her trial is another matter.

[virgogal]

2. God!This makes waterboarding seem like child's play.

I watch "Locked Up Abroad" and anyone that fools around with another country's laws is nuts.

Our own are bad enough.

[Rebubula]

4. Yeah...

...programs like 'Scared Straight' and The Locked up Abroad ones have always kept me on the straight and narrow.

I am not a criminal type person (other than violating drug laws), but when I travel I am even more observant of local laws.

[bluestateguy]

3. I'm sure any minute now there will be some poster(s) coming along to blame America for this

Just watch.

[rocktivity]

5. They're not even planning to wait until after she gives birth?

:crazy:
rocktivity