01:03
Reporter
María Nieves García Alcaraz, originally from Torraba in Albacete, was today sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Thailand after pleading guilty to drug trafficking, a crime that is usually punishable by death under Thai law.
In pronouncing condemn, the judge said the crime dedicated by García Alcaraz would normally carry the death penalty, but this was reduced after taking into account the fact that the defendant had pleaded guilty.
Thai prosecutors accused the 52-year-old Spaniard of "drug possession and importation for distribution", after 3.1 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine were found in her luggage as she passed through Bangkok airport on August 9th last year, after arriving on a flight from the Ethiopian capital Addis Adaba.
The defendant, who appeared in court dressed in the beige blouse and long skirt brown that constitute Thai prison uniform, and wearing a surgical mask in order to hide part of her face asked the judge to exclude the Efe journalist, the only accredited foreign journalist, from court, which he did.
García Alcaraz initially denied all knowledge of the drugs in her hand luggage, saying that a Ghanaian man had asked her to take the package to the Indonesian resort of Bali. She later pleaded guilty to the offence.
García Alcaraz is the first Spanish woman to be arrested in Thailand for drug trafficking in the past 13 years. In 1991 in the city were 33 Spaniards in prison in Thailand for drug trafficking. In 1987 a bilateral agreement came into force, allowing Spanish citizens to complete their life sentences in Spain after serving a minimum of eight years in a Thai prison.
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