Family of 33-year-old Hull woman say she brought 290 tramadol tablets into country for husband to use for chronic back pain

A shop assistant from Hull has been sentenced to three years in prison in Egypt after she was convicted of possessing controlled drugs found on her as she entered the country.

Laura Plummer, 33, has already been detained for nearly three months since she was arrested on suspicion of trafficking drugs at Hurghada airport, by customs officers who found 290 tramadol tablets in her luggage.

Tramadol, a potent synthetic opioid, can only be prescribed by medical professionals in Egypt, but it is often obtained illegally and is said to be the country’s most abused drug.

Plummer has said she was bringing the pills into the country for her Egyptian husband, who has chronic back pain. Her family are understood to have lodged an immediate appeal.

Her sister, Rachel Plummer, told the Guardian: “Three years. I can’t believe it. We are devastated. We had all the evidence showing her innocence.”

Plummer’s family said her partner, Omar Caboo, had previously presented medical records that they said proved he had long-term back problems requiring pain medication.

Asked whether she felt confident the British government would be able to help free her sister following the sentencing, Rachel Plummer said: “They would have done so by now, surely?”

She said she was rushing to visit her sister in Egypt as soon as possible: “I can’t believe this is happening. It’s so unfair.”

Asked what the UK government could be doing to help Plummer at this stage, Rachel Plummer said she had no comment on any potential course of action. “They’ve made it clear they can’t help,” she said.

British diplomats had felt unable to intervene until after Plummer’s sentencing. However, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, had assured Plummer’s MP, Karl Turner, that he would continue to do everything he could to help her and her family.

Turner called Plummer’s sentence a “massive blow” to her family. He said it was clear that the “decent, honest and hardworking Hull woman” was not a drug trafficker and would not have understood the dangers of taking the substance into the country.



“Now that the judicial process has completed, I have no doubt that Foreign Office ministers will be making representations to their Egyptian ministerial counterparts to see what can be done to bring this shocking saga to an end,” he said.

“Laura’s defence team are currently considering whether they should appeal and they have 60 days to lodge that appeal. I’m hoping good sense will finally prevail.”

Turner has requested that the Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt push for Plummer to be transferred to a prison in Cairo to make family visits easier. He is also looking into her eligibility for the prison transfer scheme, which would let her serve a portion of her sentence in a UK jail. “This may be a possibility, but enquiries need to be made,” he said.

Plummer’s lawyer, Mohamed Osman, confirmed the sentence to the Guardian on Tuesday morning. He has argued that Plummer did not traffic the tramadol, but brought it into the country for her partner’s use.

The sentencing comes a day after proceedings were postponed because a mistaken translation caused the judge to believe that Plummer had confessed to trafficking.

The mix-up came after the court declined to use a interpreter appointed by Plummer’s defence team, instead calling on a member of the bench to translate. Osman said he raised an objection after Plummer’s confirmation that she understood the charge was mistranslated in a way that made it look as though she had pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.

Plummer was first arrested on 9 October after a scan of her bags found she was carrying a large supply of tramadol. She was later forced to sign a 38-page confession document in Arabic, which she does not read or understand.

Her family has said Plummer had no idea that what she doing was illegal and was just “daft”.

Family of detained Briton Laura Plummer apologise to Egypt Read more

They said she did not try to hide the medicine, which she had been given by a friend, and she thought it was a joke when she was pulled over by officials after arriving for a holiday with Caboo, to whom she has been married for 18 months and who she visits several times a year.

Plummer’s family have defended Caboo against accusations that he put pressure on her to supply the drugs, arguing that he waited for her outside Hurghada airport for five hours when she was initially detained and their four-year relationship was genuine.

The pair obtained a marriage certificate in order to be able to stay together when Plummer visited Egypt, in a country where an unmarried foreigner cannot stay in the same hotel room as an Egyptian citizen of the opposite sex.

Authorities have staged a crackdown in recent years to prevent widespread misuse of tramadol. The synthetic opioid is often obtained illegally and used as a heroin substitute.

Egypt’s drug control fund, which has a free helpline, received more calls about tramadol than any other drug in August, according to Ghada Wali, the minister of social solidarity. It received 48,000 calls between January and June for issues related to the drug.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We will continue to provide assistance to Laura and her family following the court ruling in Egypt, and our embassy is in regular contact with the Egyptian authorities.”

