Cassie asks for legal aid

Australia. They are looking for state funds in Australia for the legal costs, so she was signing a form for that, to put before the government there,” Orlando Herran said in Bogota.

“It is to cover the lawyer’s fees in Australia.”

When asked if the funding would also cover his fees, Mr Herran said: “Possibly”.

Sainsbury is in El Buen Pastor prison in Bogota, weighing up her lawyers’ advice to plead 2018 COMMONWEALTH GAMES HOST CITY guilty to trying to smuggle 5.8kg of cocaine out of Colombia to Australia.

She was arrested on April 11 at El Dorado international airport after local police received a tip-off from the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

Sainsbury told family and lawyers she was tricked into carrying the drugs, thinking they were 18 plastic-wrapped packages of headphones.

The federal government offers financial support to Australians in trouble overseas through prison loans, and in some cases, the Serious Overseas Criminal Matters Scheme.

The scheme, administered by the Attorney General’s Department, is available to those arrested overseas if they face more than 20 years or the death penalty.

Sainsbury has been advised she faces a maximum of between eight and 25 years prison. If she pleads guilty Mr Herran said she could receive as little as four years jail.

The fund paid part of the legal costs of the executed Bali Nine members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, as well as Schapelle Corby.

Sainsbury’s family and fiance have two high-profile Australian lawyers, as well as Mr Herran in Bogota, and at least one of them is expected in the Colombian capital this week.

Under the funding scheme, which is not capped, counsel can be paid a rate of $2640 to $3600 a day, according to a fact sheet published in 2012.

Sainsbury is being held in the minimum-security patio five of El Buen Pastor.

A prisoner in another section of the jail yesterday described this wing as “the best one to be in. It’s all foreigners, fraud cases, drug smugglers and no violent criminals”.