By Luke McMahon
Phnom Penh: An Australian woman serving a 23-year prison sentence in Cambodia for drug smuggling has been declared innocent and set free after the Cambodian Court of Appeal agreed that she was the victim of an internet love scam.
The 46-year-old former Queensland primary school teacher, Yoshe Ann Taylor, landed back in Australia this morning to reunite with her two children, whom she has not spoken to in five years.
Yoshe Ann Taylor arrives at Brisbane airport on Thursday morning.Credit: Paul Harris
The Cambodian court accepted in a hearing on Good Friday that Ms Taylor was lured to the capital, Phnom Penh, in late 2013 on the promise of love and a career in the arts and crafts business.
In reality she was the victim of a highly organised scam run by an international drug smuggling syndicate, which tricked her into carrying luggage through Phnom Penh airport with 2.2 kilograms of heroin concealed in its lining. The Australian Federal Police had tipped off Cambodian authorities, who stopped her at the airport.
Six years later, early on Thursday, Ms Taylor arrived back at Brisbane airport. Meeting her Australian-based lawyer, Alex Wilson, she said nothing, but looked shell-shocked.
After the verdict was read out on Good Friday to a visibly shaking Ms Taylor, she let out an audible gasp and had to be assisted to remain standing.
Standing in front of the three Judges, Ms Taylor bowed and thanked the Court before being led out by guards and escorted to a waiting area where she embraced supporters and her Cambodian lawyer, So Mosseny.
The mother of two looked both elated and stunned that her six-year nightmare was over.
Still shaking and holding back tears, Ms Taylor told The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it. I thought it was going to be the same as the last time.”
Ms Taylor then requested food be brought to the prison.
Yoshe Ann Taylor, 46, in the visiting room of the Cambodian Court of Appeal after the court dropped the drug trafficking charges against her.Credit: Luke McMahon
“I have so many people I need to thank, so many of the other prisoners who helped me survive. I want to be able to give them something, to thank them.”
However, as the decision came at the end of Cambodian New Year celebrations, Ms Taylor was placed back in the same prison van and sent back to the jail which the court had just ordered her released to give time for the paperwork to be processed. It took almost two weeks for that to happen.
Ms Taylor's two children, who were nine and 14 when she was arrested, have not spoken to their mother since a brief phone conversation in 2014.
They were elated at the decision.
“Finally, my mum is coming home,” said Ms Tayor’s now 17-year-old daughter.
Ms Taylor's plight was first exposed in a 2016 investigation by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, which revealed that the Australian Federal Police had tipped off Cambodian authorities and were aware of the operation of the love scam.
The release came after a series of crushing losses at trial and appeal. Her fortunes were reversed after The Age and Sydney Morning Herald exposed additional Australian cases linked to the same syndicate.
Like Ms Taylor, the victims in those cases were found to have been duped by the same Cambodian based man who went by the online alias, Precious Max.
Precious Max.
The Nigerian national, whose real name was Precious Cheme Nwoko, claimed to be a successful South African business man running an import export business.
Nwoko was sentenced alongside Taylor in 2014 to 30 years in prison. He continued his scam from behind bars.
In 2015, the year after he was sentenced, Nwoko lured another Australian woman, a single mother of three from Melbourne, to Cambodia on the promise of marrying her. On her arrival in the capital he claimed he was taken away on urgent business.
In reality he was sitting in a prison cell only a short distance from her hotel.
Taylor in a Cambodian prison in 2016.
That woman also carried two kilograms of heroin. She was arrested at Melbourne airport, but the charges were dropped when it became clear she was a victim of the scam. After she was arrested she provided a detailed statement to the Australian Federal Police.
Those cases were first aired in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald articles, which were tendered to the Cambodian court as evidence in Ms Taylor's appeal.
Following a loss in 2016 at the same Court which Friday set her free, Ms Taylor was assisted by Melbourne based solicitor Ms Wilson, who in 2017 secured the services of renowned Cambodian lawyer, So Mosseny. Ms Wilson was not in court for the Good Friday verdict.
Mr Mosseny said after Friday's decision, "Finally, Yoshe has obtained justice”.
Taylor is unrecognisable after going hungry in a Cambodian prison. Her with children Kahlyla, left, and Archer, right.Credit: Facebook
In July 2018, the country's Supreme Court quashed Ms Taylor's conviction, and Cambodia’s highest Court remitted the case to the same court which had ruled against her in a December 2016 appeal.
In handing down its decision the three-judge panel led by Judge Chay Chandaravan said the defence had provided new evidence of other cases in Australia, which were not known at the time of her conviction, in which the defendants had either had their cases discontinued by the Commonwealth or were found not guilty at trial after becoming victims of Nwoko and the same syndicate.
The judges also relied on Ms Taylor having consistently maintained that she was unaware when leaving Cambodia that the bags she had been asked to carry contained drugs. The claim was supported by one of the arresting officers, who gave evidence at her 2014 trial that upon first inspecting the bags they appeared normal until cut open.