The defendant, a South African female, was intercepted by Customs officers when she arrived at Hong Kong International Airport from Dhaka and was escorted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for examination.
X-ray examination showed foreign objects inside her body and she excreted a total of 90 pellets of drugs during the next few days.
Under caution she said that she was offered a job to deliver some stuff and travelled to Dhaka via Doha and Kathmandu where she was asked to swallow the pellets before taking the flight to Hong Kong. She was promised 20,000 Rand if she successfully delivered the drugs.
Upon analysis the drugs were found to contain 0.89 kilogrammes of a mixture containing 0.48 kilogrammes of heroin hydrochloride. The market value of the drugs at the time was estimated to be $647,000-odd.
She is now aged 47. She has a clear record in Hong Kong.
By way of mitigation I was told that the defendant committed the present offence out of poverty and that she has four children back in South Africa. Two elder children have completed their education whilst she faced great difficulties in paying for education of her two younger daughters and so had fallen prey to traffickers to earn quick money.
In sentencing drug related offences very little credit is given by the court to factors other than a defendant’s guilty plea. The tariff is one based on the weight of the narcotics.
I have taken into account all that could have been said by counsel for the defendant, her guilty plea. The total narcotics in the present case is 0.48 kilogrammes. For trafficking in heroin between 400 to 600 grammes the tariff is one of between 15 to 20 years.
The present case involves an international element which is an aggravating factor. I consider a starting point of 17 years’ imprisonment appropriate. I shall give her the full one-third discount for her guilty plea.
There is nothing in this case which warrants a further discount. She is sentenced to 136 months’ imprisonment. That is 11 years and 4 months.