‘Hemorrhoid patient’ gets ten years for heroin smuggling.
A 52-year-old woman was sentenced to ten years in prison on Friday for trying to smuggle nearly five kilogrammes of heroin into Sweden.
The woman claims she had come to Sweden to seek treatment for trouble with her hemorrhoids.
Customs officials at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport stopped the woman in September and found 4,975 grammes of heroin stashed in one of her bags.
Officials estimate the confiscated drugs had a street value of around 7.5 million kronor ($940,000).
According to prosecutors, the 52-year-old woman worked as a security guard in Singapore earning the equivalent of a few thousand kronor per month.
But the woman’s passport showed that she had been on a number of expensive international trips.
Between July and September alone she had traveled from Malaysia to Spain, to Turkey, to Brazil, and back to Turkey, before coming to Sweden.
The woman alleged that her actions were neither intentional nor negligent and that she wasn’t aware of the bag’s contents.
She said that in Malyasia she met several Nigerian who instructed her to seek help from a specific doctor who could help treat her hemorrhoids.
The woman then traveled around the world in search of different doctors, she explained.
In every country she met another set of Nigerians who in turn told her to visit a different doctor.
The police suspect that a Nigerian gang is responsible for the smuggling scheme.
According to doctors in Sweden, the woman didn’t need emergency treatment for her hemorrhoids.
In addition to 10 years in prison, the woman was also sentenced to deportation for life by the Attunda district court near Stockholm.
