COURT: Ms Pastana, on 21 October 2019, you pleaded guilty before the Eastern Magistracy to one count of trafficking in dangerous drugs, contrary to section 4(1)(a) and (3) of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, Cap 134 and accepted that you arrived at Hong Kong International Airport on 26 December 2018 with 634 grammes of liquid cocaine concealed inside your bra.
You travelled to Hong Kong from Brazil via Ethiopia. Under interview, you admitted that you had been asked to carry something to Hong Kong for a reward and had your travel and your accommodation expenses paid for you. At that time, you were not prepared to admit that you knew you were trafficking in dangerous drugs.
Your plea of guilty on 21 October 2019, which you have confirmed previously before this court, indicates that you now accept that you knew that you were trafficking dangerous drugs into Hong Kong.
The estimated street value of what you brought into Hong Kong was $992,565 if it had been sold at that time.
You of course would have had absolutely no idea of the value of what you carried nor of the consequences to you of the amount of dangerous drugs you were asked to carry into Hong Kong. That is why people such as yourself are used as drug mules.
The difficulty the courts face in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world is that trafficking of dangerous drugs is an evil which affects very many people both directly and indirectly as it affects families and communities. Drug dealers are always looking for ways to transport their goods to avoid detection and they use people who are wholly ignorant of what could happen to them if they were caught carrying large quantities of dangerous drugs.
It may not feel like it but you are very lucky that you were destined for Hong Kong and not Indonesia, Malaysia or Singapore. Your fate would have been far worse if you had travelled to any of those jurisdictions. But I also accept that the sentencing regime elsewhere in the world is far less punitive and you may not have known the risk that you were taking. However, we are in Hong Kong and here in Hong Kong we do our very best to deter trafficking in dangerous drugs.
Ms Pastana, you are now 25 years of age and of good character. You were pregnant when you carried out this crime. Your little boy, Benjamin, was born on 19 February 2019 which means that he will only be allowed to remain with you for another eight months or so and he will then be taken into care. That will be a huge blow to both you and to your son. He was born in Hong Kong and knows nothing of his family but you. He also has no concept of your culture in Brazil and only very little of the local Hong Kong culture. He is the person who will be punished the most by what you foolishly chose to do. He too has rights before the courts of Hong Kong, and I have considered his position in coming to the sentence I must pass upon you.
But you cannot be treated wholly differently from others who come before the courts. Otherwise, they can properly say they have been treated unfairly and if this court is unduly lenient, drug-trafficking syndicates will target pregnant women in debt to be their mules.
The courts of Hong Kong, however, are not cold-hearted. There has to be seen to be a parity of sentence as between all drug traffickers but there is also an acceptance by the courts that individual sentencing is still appropriate and your circumstances can afford a degree of discretion.
I acknowledge that a large proportion of those who come before the High Court come from circumstances such as yours. Who else would be foolish enough to take such a risk for what is in relative terms most probably a small amount of money although to you, I imagine, it felt like a fortune and an end to your financial troubles, having been left unsupported by the father of Benjamin and with your sick mother and the rest of your family to care for?
But even amongst those who import drugs into Hong Kong, there are facts which distinguish you. You are not very young but you are certainly unworldly and you were pregnant and cast adrift by the father of your child. You had no concept of the harm you were doing or the risk you took. You are clearly an otherwise decent human being and you have gone to great lengths to use the time you have spent in prison sensibly and to better yourself.
You have also done everything possible from a very early stage to assist which I do not believe was a cynical ploy to use the system to your advantage, and I accept that in doing so you have placed yourself and your family at considerable risk. But in doing so you may have saved other people like you from a similar fate.
The guideline case in trafficking in between 600 grammes and 1,200 grammes of cocaine is HKSAR v Abdallah [2009] 2 HKLRD 437, and the range of sentence is between 20 to 23 years. The role you carried out sits squarely within these guidelines but it is nevertheless not to be applied in a strictly mathematical manner. It is for the sentencing judge to decide how to apply those guidelines upon the facts before her. For 634 grammes of cocaine, I will adopt a starting point after trial of 20 years.
There is also the aggravating feature that you have imported drugs into Hong Kong. According to HKSAR v Chung Ping Kun, CACC 85/2014, for 634 grammes of liquid cocaine, the appropriate enhancement on these facts would be 1 year, making a total of 21 years.
In addition to what I have already said, I have read the various documents submitted and I have heard, not just on this occasion but on other occasions, all that Ms Mohamed has said on your behalf about your background and your circumstances today, the considerable efforts you have made to rehabilitate whilst caring at the same time for your new-born son and the assistance that you have given. There is little more that you could possibly have done to show your genuine remorse.
Above all, I am reminded of your role as a parent and of your young son who is born in Hong Kong and who is thereby entitled to our especial consideration.
For all of the above which I cannot detail here, I intend to reduce the starting point to a term of 11 years, and I will discount that by a further 6 months for the efforts you have genuinely made towards deterring drugs in Brazil through Father Wotherspoon’s programme.
You will have to go to prison for a period of 10 years and 6 months. I sincerely hope that you can be reunited with your son as soon as possible and that the authorities of Hong Kong and Brazil assist you to do so.