KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 9 — An Australian country court has sentenced Zailee Hana Zainal to over nine years’ imprisonment after she pleaded guilty to an attempt to smuggle a kilogramme of heroin into the country last year.
According to Australia’s ABC News, however, Victoria County Court judge Michael Cahill said Zailee deserved leniency when handing down the sentence.
Cahill said in court that Zailee, 40, only undertook the smuggling attempt on behalf of an Australian drug ring as she had been desperate for money to pay for her daughter’s medical expenses.
The judge said the former Malindo stewardess’s daughter has congenital defects that required surgery from before she was a year old and still needed several more.
In a letter to the court for mitigation, Zailee asserted that she did not know the substance she brought into Australia over 20 times for a pay of approximately A$1,700 per run was specifically heroin.
However, Cahill said she could not deny that she knew her actions were illegal, given that she took the effort to conceal the packages in her undergarments.
“You knew you were carrying a border controlled drug, and persons in Melbourne were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he was quoted as saying
“You worked as a courier for a highly sophisticated transnational drug syndicate.”
Earlier, Cahill disclosed in his court that the Malaysian had said she only turned to the syndicate out of desperation after previous attempts to raise money through selling cupcakes and Tupperware.
Zailee was arrested in January of 2019.
She was sentenced to nine years and six months of imprisonment, with parole prohibited before four years and nine months have been served.
