Any sympathy for the British drug mule in Georgia?

[mids2019]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14723481/drug-mule-suspect-company-director-Chinese-retailers-Amazon.html

I was reading about this girl and actually do have a little symapthy. She is obviously vain, stupid, misguidedly ambitious but I don't know whether she is real player in the drug trade and has probably been groomed into carrying drugs by men promising her the earth.

The penalties for drug smuggling are understandably harsh on Georgia but should the UK try and get her to serve a sentence in the UK?

I also was given this book by a fellow traveller! Think it was in Aus after I'd been through Thailand. Also given one called 'The Needle & the Damage Done' about an Australian guy jailed in Bangkok. Terrifying. Gave it to my son 2 years ago before he first went travelling & his dad watched 'Midnight Express' with him. He's super switched on, but ypu need to ram the point home no matter what.

DS2 is going inter-railing this summer (not exactly the pits of Pattaya, but still). This has reminded me to get the book off his brother & force him to read it.

Ah, I see, we're now treating a casual comment like 'I suspect she’s not neurotypical' as an official clinical diagnosis.

If that’s the standard, half of Mumsnet should be billing for private assessments. 😂

But just to reassure you, no professionals were harmed, or even consulted in the making of my post. It was, quite clearly, an opinion. An opinion based on the neurotypical youngsters I have met.

You’re of course welcome to disagree, but pretending it was masquerading as a formal diagnosis is a bit of a stretch, even for MN drama.

Some of those Company House records show September 2024, does that mean she was mixed up in this all those months ago?

A cynical part of me wondered if she had been told to say she was pregnant, worry about a test later, might get you better treatment, your period comes and you say you’ve lost the baby, more better treatment. Who knows their tactics.

Well if the pregnancy plea doesn’t pan out she can always fall back on that one. Though I have a feeling neither will have much traction in Georgia, not when you have been found with a suitcase full of drugs.

Immense sympathy for a stupid girl who was caught in the political cross-hairs. We (the UK) have been trying to destabilise Georgia for a while now, via the 'neutral' NGOs, ahem, ahem, pushing for regime change, trying to sabotage their elections. I hope she will be released, she is a moron, but had our government not been so active in the region not vital to our interests, she would have been released without this circus.

It’s easy for us all to say we wouldn’t make the same choices when we don’t know what her choices were.

That said I always struggle to have much empathy for those in the drugs trade.

I think the pictures on social media of her wads of cash and her bragging about it tells us what her choices were.

Absolutely agree! My 19 year old is a first year at university but I’d still know and notice and be extremely concerned!

.

Exactly, I have ADHD and it makes me cautious because I’m always doubting myself.

I think the 'sell an Amazon account to someone' I can sort of understand someone not realising what was really going on there - a stupid person, admittedly, because no ones buying an amazon account or getting you to be the director of a company for £550 for a good or legal reason... I can see someone not realising the full implications though.

But that seems to be a separate thing to the drug smuggling and you do not 'accidentally' travel to those places and fetch back 14KG of anything. You know you're doing something highly illegal, you can look up what happens to people who are caught. No sympathy for that one whatsoever.

Did you act as a drug mule too? Because I don’t think me or any of my friends did, and we did some stupid shit.

Regardless of purported government conspiracies, there is no country in the world that would simply release a drug smuggler as you suggest. This wasn't a bit of weed for personal consumption. It was 14kg. This has nothing to do with "political cross-hairs" and everything to do with her deliberately breaking the law.

Yes, some.
Clearly she’s in way above her head. I blame the apparent lack of education and bad parenting. If we keep wrapping kids in cotton wool and not educating them about the real world, the consequence of actions, and how not everyone they meet has their best interests at heart, then we’ll continue to bread a generation of morons. We exist in a world where young people are made to believe money comes easily, because they see people succeed on tik tok & others. The lifestyle they crave is expensive and they see quick options to make cash.

She’s not the first, and sadly won’t be the last.

I have absolutely no sympathy for her.
The luckiest thing that's happened to her is that she actually ended up in Georgia.
Apparently, her journey from Thailand was via Sharjah in the UAE.
If you think Georgia's bad, it will be a walk in the park compared to dry Sharjah where she would have been facing the death penalty.
How she managed to transit through there is anyone's guess.

She's is thick as mince.

She's is thick as mince

oh no she's not NT now, she must have ADHD as well. She can't be just plain old thick and greedy.

Lighten her sentence if she gives up the smugglers/brains behind the operation, because she certainly wasn't.

I had the same thing about 20 years ago. No way.

Look at her social media posts!!! It’s abundantly clear what her options and intentions were.

I imagine the dealers stitched her up so another mule could get through undetected. That's the MO in these cases.

Released?

That would only encourage more greedy people wanting to smuggle huge amounts of drugs!!!

It was marijuana, not heroin.

People are remarkably unsympathetic to drug mules, but they are genuinely thick and desperate for money. Many are addicts or in debt.

And the reality is drugs smuggled through airports are a tiny amount of the total. Tons of the stuff comes in through the post, overland on large lorries and directly on large ships.

I am not saying they should not be punished but the punishments seem harsh and it seems to be going after easy targets to be seen to be doing something rather than tackling the large smuggling operations or the demand.

Then don’t be so greedy and accept becoming a mule! That’s why we need tough punishments, to discourage others to follow suit.

Did she never watch banged up abroad.

Poor kid, she's obviously not very bright and has made a couple of daft mistakes. Her poor family, they must be beside themselves. I do hope she can serve her sentence in the UK.