Foreign Nationals The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) released a report in 2016 in which they noted the inconsistency with which death sentences are applied for the same crimes, claiming there to be a ‘distinct disparity in the severity of punishment imposed on foreigners as compared to Laotians’ (FIDH 2016). One interviewee, a human rights defender from Laotian NGO MLDH, commented on how Lao citizens charged with drug crimes often don’t have access to a lawyer, unless they come from a wealthy family. Where these cases concern European nationals, however, they are often able to avoid death sentences. The most recent case involving a foreign national sentenced to death in Laos was that of Samantha Orobator, which received huge media attention in 2009. Laos’ position within the opium-cultivating ‘Golden Triangle’, estimated to produce onequarter of the world’s heroin (Mayberry 2015) means that many foreign nationals get caught up in the illegal drugs trade in the region. In the last decade the region has also taken on a major role in the world’s methamphetamine production. The area’s harsh drug laws mean many unwitting drug mules may face the death penalty. Case Study 2008 - Samantha Orobator British citizen Samantha Orobator was just 19 when she was caught with 680g of heroin at Wattay airport in Vientiane, Laos’ capital, in August 2008 and sentenced to death. Her sentence was reduced to one of life imprisonment after she became pregnant in Phantong prison in January 2009. Laotian law prohibits the execution of pregnant convicts. Accounts of how she became pregnant vary, but the Vientiane Times quoted Orobator as telling authorities that she secretly obtained sperm from fellow prisoner and British drug smuggler John Watson, in order to impregnate herself to avoid the death penalty. In July 2009, Orobator was then transferred to a British prison after negotiations between Laos and Britain, and the signing of the Treaty on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons in May 2009, allowing prisoners to be extradited to serve their time in prisons on home soil, on the condition that the sentence is enforced in the home country (NBS News 2009).