Australian taxpayers fork out $100,000 for Cassie Sainsbury’s defence in Colombia
THE lawyer for drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury denies the Australian Government footed the bill for her court battle.
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AUSTRALIAN taxpayers have reportedly picked up the bill for Cassandra Sainsbury’s $100,000 legal defence after she tried smuggling cocaine out of Colombia.
The 22-year-old was yesterday sentenced to six years’ jail and ordered to pay a $130,000 fine after pleading guilty to drug trafficking.
While the Australian government won’t cover the Adelaide woman’s fine, Seven News reported taxpayers will pay for her five months of legal assistance.
However Sainsbury’s Colombian lawyer, Orlando Herran, told News Corp Australia that the reports were not true.
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Other convicted drug smugglers such as Schapelle Corby, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran also had part of their legal bills covered by Aussie taxpayers.
Australians facing serious charges overseas and more than 20 years’ jail time receive some financial support from the government.
Sainsbury had faced up to 30 years in Bogota’s El Buen Pastor prison for trying to smuggle almost 6kg of cocaine on April 12.
But yesterday a Colombian judge accepted a plea deal, which means “Cocaine Cassie” could be out of prison in two-and-a-half years if she gets time for good behaviour.
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Sainsbury was arrested in April at Bogota’s international airport boarding a flight to London.
An X-ray machine detected cocaine stashed in packages of headphones in her luggage. She told police she bought the headphones to bring back to Australia for her wedding.
However she changed her story several times, later claiming she had been set up and threatened by people back in Sydney, where she said she worked as a receptionist at a brothel.
Prosecutors, in seeking leniency, were persuaded that her crimes weren’t so black and white, said her lawyer.
“She’s lucky because the amount of the drugs was very big,” Mr Herran told a bevy of Australian journalists who travelled to Colombia after the closed-door hearing.
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Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine and its police among the best trained to detect and stop drug smuggling, thanks in part to billions of dollars in US anti-narcotics aid that has strengthened law enforcement.
Many families have sad tales of loved ones who’ve spent years behind bars in the US and elsewhere after being drawn by economic hardship into the lower rungs of the drug trade.
As tourism to Colombia has boomed over the past decade, the country’s drug cartels are increasingly recruiting foreigners to smuggle cocaine out of the country. So far this year, Colombian police have arrested 67 foreign drug mules.
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