KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 8 — British woman Samantha Jones will go free soon after she was initially handed a prison term last year for stabbing her husband in Langkawi back in 2018, British newspaper Daily Mirror has reported.
The British daily reported that Jones was “thrilled to bits” after finding out that she will be released in weeks, after serving 28 months in prison since her arrest in October 2018.
She was reportedly scheduled to go out on February 18, but will now have to face Covid-19 quarantine first before being deported to United Kingdom.
The paper said Jones’ family has been told to provide the funds to pay for her flights and accommodation.
The former insurance clerk from Somerset, England was remanded on October 19, 2018 after allegedly stabbing her husband of 17 years in their villa in Langkawi.
The 52-year-old then admitted to “culpable homicide”, which is roughly the equivalent to manslaughter, and was handed the jail term and ordered to pay a fine of RM10,000.
She had initially been charged with murder, which carries a mandatory death sentence in Malaysia, but in August 2020 prosecutors agreed to the lesser charge.
In mitigation, her lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo said Jones had long suffered from physical and emotional abuse meted out by her husband, who was an alcoholic and had a fierce temper.
The fight began on October 18, 2018, after Jones’s husband kicked her when she was lying in bed in the early hours of the morning, the lawyer said.
Jones fled to the kitchen, but he followed and a fight began, during which she stabbed the victim with a knife.
She inflicted a 15-centimetre wound in the liver of the 63-year-old victim, who was under the influence of alcohol at the time, according to prosecutors.
The British couple had been married since 2001 without children, and had lived since 2005 in Langkawi.
