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Cassie Sainsbury, or ‘Cocaine Cassie’ as she has been dubbed by the media, has been sentenced to six years in jail after a Colombian judge accepted a plea deal.
The 22-year-old South Australian woman could actually be out of prison in two-and-a-half years if she gets time for good behaviour.
Sainsbury had faced up to 30 years in Bogota’s El Beun Pastor prison for trying to smuggle almost 6kgs of cocaine on April 12.
The Minlaton local has offered several versions of how she came to be carrying the drugs, but a judge yesterday accepted her claim she had been threatened into committing the crime.
Sainsbury had claimed that a mystery man named ‘Angelo’ had tricked her after she agree to transport documents from Bogota to London, instead packing drugs into her suitcase and threatening her family.
Orlando Herron, Sainbury’s lawyer, said she was ‘lucky’ to receive such a short sentence for a ‘large’ amount of cocaine, which he said was due to the fact the judge had accepted she was a ‘victim.’
‘The judge manifestly felt that people who undergo this process are victims,’ Mr Herran said in Spanish outside court. ‘Victims of deceit, victims of their own socio-economic conditions and victims of ignorance regarding Colombian law.’
‘Her story should serve as a warning, an example to other people considering whether to do these things,’ Mr Herron continued. ‘The Colombian judicial system is well structured and it takes into account people’s particular circumstances. The fact that she was threatened was an important consideration in the plea deal.’
‘She isn’t a criminal. She made a mistake, she allowed herself to be tricked and she didn’t use the means at her disposal by not asking authorities for help,’ he said.
In the Colombian jail system good behaviour could be termed as teaching English classes such as Sainsbury has been doing in the jail.
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