Samantha Orobator, a pregnant British woman, plead guilty to drug smuggling in Laos. Previous post here.) While Laotian law would have mandated the death penalty in her case, it also prohibits the execution of pregnant women.
How Orobator became pregnant remains a mystery, although it appears she may have been able to obtain sperm and impregnate herself to avoid the death penalty.
The case appears to be an embarrassment to the Laotian authorities, which also obtained from Orobator a statement that she was not raped and that the father of the child is not a Laotian citizen. “This case is not about babies, it is a case about heroin,” Kenthong Nuanthasing, the country’s chief government spokesman, told the South China Morning Post last month.
“We don’t want the outside world to blame us [for the pregnancy]. That is why we asked her to write a letter to certify that she was not raped and the baby inside her is not a Lao baby . . . She did not have intercourse with any man in prison. There is no male close to her during her time in prison. All the prisoners are women and all the guards are female. Maybe it is a baby from the sky like [the Virgin] Maria.”
If both Laos and Britain agree, she may be transfered to Britain to serve her sentence. The prisoners' rights group Reprieve is campaigning for her transfer.
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