to hope the Foreign Office don't waste any time on Laura Plummer...

[PiffleandWiffle]

She was stupid enough to smuggle drugs into a country against their laws, got caught & got sentenced.

BBC Link

Cue the predictable wailing & cries of "it's not fair" from the family!

Personally, I'd rather the Foreign Office spent it's time trying to help people who are genuinely in trouble abroad rather than idiots drug smugglers....

I think some people are confusing two different illegal acts - obtaining the drugs in the UK, which will be covered by the Police, CPS and English courts, and smuggling illegal drugs into Eygpt, which has been covered by the Egyptian system. I doubt if the latter care very much how she got them, they are only interested in her attempt to get them into the country. As others have said, there is a current problem with misuse of tramadol in Egypt, so the authorities are reacting.

Why on earth would the friend say anything? And how do they think it would help Laura if she did?

Possessing tramadol in the UK without a prescription is apparently illegal in the UK.

And passing on tramadol you have been prescribed to someone else is also illegal in the UK.

So even if this Donna Irvin had a prescription for it, she acted illegally passing it on, and Laura broke the law possessing it without a prescription of her own.

And Laura then broke Egyptian law by taking pills she was already in illegal possession of into Egypt. They're not going to look at her friend's prescription and say "fair enough, off you go."

How can the family not see that? It seems like they are desperate to blame everybody but Laura, which I can understand to a point, but they might get more sympathy if they accepted she's committed a crime and didn't try to paint her as some hapless dimwit victim of everybody else.

Hygge, Donna Irwin and her friends have taken legal advice for sure and are being directed - A friend claims he has been present when Laura pops into Donna's and asks for a couple of Tramadol and Donna has said help yourself from the "medicine pot" - so this has added a vague and murky element in that she never intended to supply, that Laura Plummer took the pills. 290, Christ! What a haul of Class C drugs to be carrying, but that is that she flew into a regional airport 5 hours from where she was staying an not into Cairo, which was nearer!

eulittle that seems sensible.

Whatever involvement Donna Irvin might or might not have had, she's not responsible for Laura's decisions.

Implicating herself now if she did give the pills to Laura, I can't see that it would help Laura in any way. It doesn't make Donna responsible for Laura deciding to take them into Egypt

But if Laura took the pills from her without her knowledge , is it possible that her family pushing for Donna Irvin to be investigated might actually bring more charges against Laura herself?

Who knows how many times she's done it already. She was visiting her ''urfi' husband 3 to 4 times a year over the last 4 or so years. I think she finally got caught!!

I didn't actually realise she was decanting the tramadol into paracetamol packets which makes it premeditated.

I should imagine her mentality was "oh I'm a bit naughty, in I".

Despite that I still would like to see her released early. The Sun really cocked up with their reportage.

Does anyone know why she can't be transferred to a British jail?

She has committed the crime on Egyptian soil so needs to do time under the Egyptian judicial system. She cannot do her time in the UK for crime committed in Egypt but then she has committed crime in UK by illegally getting those pills having duped the NHS. For that she is entitled to be a guest at Her Majesty's prison.

YANBU. She's a criminal. If she was a man, would this thread even be here?

Bluebell good point. I wonder if the frequency of her visits is what made the Egyptian authorities search her. Usually they just wave you through customs.