Transformed from smiling tourist, Briton who has spent six months in Egyptian jail
BARELY recognisable even to her own family, this is the British woman jailed in Egypt for taking painkillers into the country.
Footage has emerged showing Laura Plummer, 33, at an Easter service in Cairo’s notorious al-Qanater prison – the first time she has been pictured since her arrest in October.
The minute-long video shows Miss Plummer, a shop worker, sitting with her hands in her lap, wearing a white prison-issue jilbab.
Her sister, Jayne Synclair, 40, told The Sun: ‘She doesn’t bear any resemblance to her. It’s so hard to see her like this. We’ve obviously been out to see her regularly but she isn’t the same woman who left for a two- week holiday in the sun.
‘My mum is in bits and has complained to the Foreign Office. There doesn’t seem to be any urgency to review her case and it just feels like there’s one thing after another.’
Miss Plummer, from Hull, was arrested in October after 290 tramadol tablets were found in her suitcase.
She was initially charged with smuggling, which carries the death penalty, but that charge was dropped and she was jailed on Boxing Day for three years for possessing the painkillers.
She maintained the medicine was for her Egyptian partner Omar Caboo, who has severe back pain, and said she was unaware it was illegal to carry the drugs into Egypt.
In January there were claims Miss Plummer had been pardoned and would be released, but these reports proved to be false. Her family have previously insisted she was ‘naive’ and ‘daft’ rather than a drugs trafficker.
While tramadol is legal in the UK on prescription, it cannot be taken into Egypt without permission.