COURT: Defendant, you appear before this court for sentence, having pleaded guilty to a charge of trafficking in a dangerous drug, contrary to section 4(1)(a) and (3) of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, Cap. 134, Laws of Hong Kong, the particulars being that you, on 10 June of last year, at the Customs Arrival Hall of Hong Kong International Airport, unlawfully trafficked in 0.9 of a kilogram of a solid containing 0.68 of a kilogram of cocaine.
The Summary of Facts which you have agreed are straightforward and confirm that you arrived on the date mentioned in the charge, on a flight from Colombia, and whilst no drugs were found in your baggage, it was suspected that you had concealed drugs inside your body and, accordingly, you were taken to hospital. There, you excreted a total of 91 pellets which were found to be the drugs mentioned in the charge.
The drugs, I am told, have a retail market value of HK$900,000.
You are a mature woman of 58 years of age, a Colombian national with four grownup children and of hitherto good character. The circumstances of you committing this serious offence are tragic but all too familiar. I am told that you came into financial difficulties due to your mother and one of your siblings contracting cancer. They unfortunately both passed away due to that illness but medical expenses had already been incurred. As a consequence, you came to know a financial benefactor to whom you eventually became indebted. In order to pay off this debt, you agreed to carry these drugs into Hong Kong for a reward of US$10,000.
You have been caught and now you have to face the consequences. I can tell you, madam, it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to have to sentence you today.
The guidelines for trafficking in quantities of between 600 grammes and 1,200 grammes of cocaine are contained in the case of HKSAR v Abdallah Anwar Abbas and fall between 20 to 23 years of imprisonment. In this case, the court is dealing with 680 grammes of narcotic. Accordingly, I take as my starting point a term of 20 years and 6 months’ imprisonment.
There is an aggravating feature in this case which is, of course, the fact that you imported these drugs into Hong Kong. To take account of this, I will enhance my starting point by 12 months, coming to 21 years and 6 months’ imprisonment.
I afford you the full one-third discount in sentence to take account of your plea of guilty to this charge, arriving at a sentence of 14 years and 4 months’ imprisonment in all.