COURT: You have been found guilty after trial of trafficking in just over a kilogramme of cocaine, 1,007, 1.007 in fact. By their verdicts, the jury clearly found that you were involved in the importation of cocaine into Hong Kong via the Hong Kong International Airport and that you intended at that time the onward supply of those dangerous drugs to an unknown recipient. Those drugs were secreted inside your bra and had been brought from Sao Paulo in Brazil via Addis Ababa into Hong Kong.
You are a citizen of South Africa and 32 at the time of this offending. You told the jury that you were in the business of importing human hair from Brazil and that you have been to Brazil on five previous occasions to do so. This, you say, was what you were doing when you flew from South Africa to Brazil on 2 February 2020.
The jury by their unanimous verdict did not believe you. They found you had gone to Brazil in order to traffic in dangerous drugs into Hong Kong.
I have listened to Mr Ross and what he has urged upon the court. I have some degree of sympathy for what he is seeking to do on your behalf. Equally, I have had the benefit of your testimony before the court. I know you are a single mother with a 16-year-old daughter. I know that you are or were, at that time, the main breadwinner for your family. I know your mother had suffered for a significant period of time from depression and I know that is incapacitating. I know that you voluntarily took on the care of your siblings.
Unfortunately, as Mr Ross will have explained to you, personal mitigation of that type advanced on your behalf, and the fact that other people who you have named may be more culpable than you, unfortunately, will not reduce the guideline sentence. I am bound to pass this sentence.
It is a well-known principle of the sentencing of trafficking in dangerous drugs because this jurisdiction has a significant problem with the international trafficking of dangerous drugs, both into Hong Kong for use in Hong Kong, for movement over the border and for movement to other countries. So all of us have a duty to prevent that happening and to protect our citizens.
The guideline case for trafficking in between 600 and 1,200 grammes of cocaine, you will have been told, is HKSAR v Abdallah [2009] 2 HKLRD 437 and the range of sentence is between 20 to 23 years. But when one looks at the amount that you actually brought into Hong Kong, the narcotic content of it, the starting point after trial is 22 years.
You were part of a group of people, at the end of the day, seeking to import those drugs into Hong Kong and that those drugs, if they had stayed in Hong Kong, would have caused significant harm to whom it was sold and to society at large.
Accordingly, the sentence which I am required to pass on you, that of 22 years, does contain a substantial deterrent, although one has to say not the same deterrent that you might have faced if you had been on the mainland, in Indonesia, in Singapore or indeed Malaysia.
I am also required to consider the international element of this crime and it is an aggravating feature of the case. You brought the drugs into Hong Kong from Brazil and so in accordance with the guidelines in the same case, that is that of Abdallah, the sentence I pass upon you has to include an enhancement of 2 years for the international aspects of this organised and well-planned offending.
No matter which part and at what stage you were fully aware of what you were doing. You will go to prison for 24 years.