If convicted pregnant British woman, Samantha Orobator, will serve her sentence in Britain not in Lao.

Update: 8/7/09

Pregnant Samantha Orobator, 20, arrives at London’s Heathrow Airport this morning with unidentified traveling companions

Samantha Orobator arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport early this morning from Laos.

She was accompanied by three traveling companions and guarded by British police, who took her away to Holloway prison.

Orobator arrived to London just in time to give birth next month.

 

Update: 8/6/09

An official from the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Samantha Orobator would leave the country today for Britain.

She is expected to arrive in London early Friday.

British authorities signed a deal with Lao authorities last week agreeing to release the 20-year-old woman and another British prisoner, John Watson.

Once on her home soil, the British authorities will determine the conditions of her sentence.

Update: 6/8/09

Samantha told Laos authorities that the man who fathered her baby is fellow prisoner John Watson.

Watson’s mother told reporters that her forty-seven year old son emailed her a few months ago telling her she was about to become a grandmother.

“At first I thought he was joking, but then he rang me and he sounded ecstatic. He told me he’d met a girl and she was having his baby,” Watson’s mother, Pat told reporters.

Update: 6/3/09

Samantha Orobator has been found guilty of smuggling heroin into Laos and is sentenced to life in prison in Laos.

Original Story

A 20-year-old pregnant British woman is facing death by firing squad if she is convicted of smuggling heroin into Laos, legal campaign group Reprieve said.

Last August while on a trip to Laos, Samantha Orobator was arrested at Wattay airport for carrying 21ounces of heroin, a claim she has consistently denied.

According to the Southeast Asian country law, the death penalty is mandatory for possession of 500grams of heroin or more.

The legal group that’s representing Orobator, who became pregnant while incarcerated, said without notice, Laos re-scheduled their client’s trial for next week, after they got word that Orobator’s was being represented by them.

“By scheduling her trial for next week, the Laos court has made it impossible for any lawyer to prepare an adequate defense…Samantha’s life now hangs in the balance.  The fast tracking of the trial came as the Lao authorities knew that a lawyer from Reprieve was preparing to meet Ms. Orobator for the first time,” the legal group said.

“Laos appears to be acting in a way that frustrates Samantha’s right to appropriate legal assistance,” Reprieve continued.

Reprieve said their client had been on vacation for a month in Holland, Thailand and Laos, and was on her way back home to London when she was arrested.

The group said Orobator became pregnant four months after she was locked up in a penitentiary for women.

According to Reprieve, their client is “severely distressed” and they have “grave concerns for her health and that of her unborn child.”

Because there is no British embassy in Laos, the British embassy in Bangkok have been feverishly engaging with the Lao authorities at their highest level

*Laos (pronounced la..ous, laus or leids) is a landlocked communist country of 6 million people in Southeast Asia that borders Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west.

*After a period as a French protectorate, it gained independence in 1949. 

*In 1975, at the end of a long civil war, communist Pathet Lao movement came into power.

*from Wikipedia.

UPDATE:5/4/09

Orobator’s mother, Jane Orobator, told reporters she found out in January that her daughter was pregnant, and was surprised to find out that her daughter had traveled to Laos and was involved in drug trafficking.

“I don’t know what she was doing in Laos, the last time she spoke with me she said she was in London and would come to see us in Dublin before returning to the U.K in July.”

Samantha was born in Nigeria and moved to London with her family when she was eight.  He mother now lives in Dubai.

UPDATE 5/5/09

 Samantha has been granted her life because she is pregnant.

The Laos government said today that Samantha Orobator, who was facing a firing squad, would not be put to death because of her unborn child, the Associated Press has reported.

It is a provision of the law that any pregnant woman will not be put to death, a spokesman said.

Today a human rights lawyer and a British diplomat were both been refused access to Ms Orobator.

Her trial, which was due to start yesterday but was put back to today, was also delayed, granting officials at least 24 more hours to battle for her life.

Anna Morris, a lawyer for fair trials group Reprieve, was due to see Ms Orobator for the first time today after flying to Laos over the weekend but, along with the British Embassy official, was denied access to her today.

Khenthong Nuanthasing, a Lao government spokesman, told The Times today that he believed that the trial  would now be postponed until next week ‘due to the issue that we need a lawyer for her’.

Update: 5/7/09

CNN is reporting that if convicted, Samantha Orobator will be transferred to Britain to serve out her sentence, under an agreement that was signed today between U.K and Laotian officials.

Update: 5/10/09

“Say you weren’t raped in jail and we will let you live,” is what the Laos government allegedly told Samantha Orobator to tell the world.

Orobator’s trial is about to start this week, although she has yet to meet with her lawyer.

If she co-operates with the Asian government, she will be transferred from Laos to a U.K prison to serve out her sentence, according to an agreement between the two countries.

No one is saying how the 20-year-old Nigerian born British resident became pregnant after being incarcerated in an all female prison.

Supporters of the woman are claiming that she was raped while in prison, bloggers are speculating that she willingly had sex with the guards to escape her death sentence. In addition, the craziest one so far is a Laos representative saying, “it is a mystery—maybe it is a baby from the sky.”

 

Update: 5/22/09

Authorities in Laos said they are postponing the trial of Samantha Orobator until the truth about her pregnancy is known.

It is now being alleged that Orobator became pregnant by artificial insemination.

It is believed that she impregnated herself with the sperm of a 47-year-old British man serving a life sentence for drugs trafficking, by using a syringe that was found in her person possessions.

John Albert Watson denies having sex with Orobator saying that the few men who are in the prison are separated from the women.

According to Laos authorities, when she was first arrested, Orobator told Laos officials that she was pregnant by her boyfriend in England, but tests showed she was not.

It is alleged that she impregnated herself to avoid the death penalty.

Update: 6/2/09

A day before Samantha Orobator’s case is due to start, a government-run newspaper, The Vientiane Times, claims that Orobator admitted to authorities that she secretly impregnated herself with the sperm of another prisoner in order to escape the death penalty.