Laura Plummer’s defence is crumbling

Instead of applauding Egypt’s battle against drugs, UK media has attacked Cairo for daring to arrest and convict a British woman

he British media continues to paint Laura Plummer, the 33-year-old British shop worker who entered Egypt with 290 banned tramadol opiates as an innocent abroad even though she has been visiting a Red Sea resort three or four times annually for several years to meet up with Omar Saad, a married man with children.

Following her arrest almost every newspaper hyped its headlines with nonsensical predictions that she faced the death penalty. On December 26, she admitted smuggling drugs (an admission her lawyer tried to retract) and was sentenced to three years in prison. However, a comparatively light sentence did not prevent those same tabloids from screaming the sentence was unjust. If editors had seriously believed she had escaped the hangman’s noose, the columns should have been celebratory.

In almost every report journalists implied or stated that tramadol was legal in the UK evidently to prop up Plummer’s argument that she had no idea they were not freely sold in Egypt. In truth, use of this Class C drug without a doctor’s prescription in Britain can incur prison time of up to four years and up to 14 years for supplying, an inconvenient fact the media has chosen to ignore.

The inconsistencies in Plummer’s stacking up.

A transcript of her interview with prosecutors upon her arrival combined with her nervous demeanour passing through customs certainly provided just cause for suspicion. She did not know her ‘husband’s’ name; she only knew him as Omar and she was unaware of his address. She admitted that the couple had entered into an unofficial unregistered marriage to allow them to stay together.

Worse she insisted the tablets were meant for Omar’s mother but later changed her story saying she brought them to alleviate her ‘husband’s’ back pain. Indeed he had an accident some time ago and has produced X-rays to show that his back was injured which Plummer’s lawyers hoped would sway judges in Laura’s favour.

There is just one problem. Despite allegedly being incapacitated, Omar worked as a hotel lifeguard after his accident. In any event, government-authorised Egyptian doctors are permitted to prescribe tramadol to relieve severe chronic pain.

New evidence has since emerged to the effect Omar lost his job with a five-star hotel when marijuana was discovered in a room he shared with other employees. He insists the cache wasn’t his but acknowledges the incident’s exposure could affect Laura’s chances of an early release.

“I did not want to violate her life and I had no idea she would bring tramadol,” he said, adding, “I would have told her ‘don’t bring it to Egypt’.”

Returning to the transcript, when asked whether story are she had brought-in tablets like this before, she said “No, I got them from a friend in England.” The friend in question is 53-year-old Donna Irvin who has refused to come forward to back up Plummer’s assertion.

In the latest twist, Irvin has denied giving the pills to her friend and is furious that her name was ever mentioned. Her close friend Sharon Shepherdson confirmed to the Daily Mail that if Donna Irvin did have prescribed tablets she wouldn’t be giving them away as she would need them for her own ailments. In any event, no reputable doctor would ever write a prescription for such a large quantity of controlled drugs.

So if Irvin is to be believed, where did Plummer get the tramadol, a question UK newspapers have studiously avoided asking? The surprise is that the UK police have not questioned Irvin. Why is this? Could it be because they would be obliged under the law to prosecute which could undermine Plummer’s defence?

Little honest reporting

There has been very little honest reporting on this case. Numerous British reporters have sought to give the impression that tramadol is benign whereas its side effects include loss of memory, abdominal pain, hallucinations, cramping, severe nausea, difficulty with breathing and loss of consciousness.

In Egypt, the drug is illegally sold on the street for recreational purposes, as an aphrodisiac or to prolong wakefulness in people with more than one job; more than 44 per cent of Egyptian addicts are hooked on tramadol. The sheer scale of the problem has caused the government to crack down.

The country should be applauded for its efforts to save its youth from crippling addiction, but instead its police and judiciary have come under constant attack from the UK media for daring to arrest and convict a British woman for making what they describe a silly mistake.

Laura’s Member of Parliament Karl Turner has warned that tourism to Egypt could be damaged. Her mother has appealed to President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi to issue a pardon. The Egyptian authorities get the bad guy rap and the attractive blonde smuggler is crowned with a heroine’s halo in our ever more topsy-turvy world.

Linda S. Heard is an award-winning British political columnist and guest television commentator with a focus on the Middle East.