(24 May 2018) An Australian woman accused of drug trafficking in Malaysia was sentenced to death after an appeals court on Thursday overturned a lower court's acquittal, her lawyer said.
Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto was exonerated by the High Court last December on grounds that she didn't know there were 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) of crystal methamphetamine in her bag when she was arrested in December 2014 at Kuala Lumpur's international airport.
The prosecution appealed.
Her defence lawyer Shafiee Abdulla called Thursday's judgement "perverse."
Exposto, a 54-year-old mother of four from Sydney and also a grandmother, had arrived from Shanghai and was to catch a connecting flight to Melbourne when she was detained in Malaysia.
The drugs were discovered when she put two bags through the security scanner when exiting the airport.
Exposto had said she went to Shanghai to meet a US serviceman with whom she had an online romance, and had been asked to carry a bag full of clothes.
She said she was unaware that the bag also contained drugs.
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