Two British women convicted of heroin trafficking as teenagers left prison for the first time in three years Wednesday after receiving a royal pardon.
"I'm feeling great," said Karyn Smith, 22, as she and Patricia Cahill, 20, walked out of Bangkok's Lat Yao Prison at about 6:45 p.m. waving and smiling broadly and accompanied by prison guards and British Embassy officials.Asked how she felt on being told of her release, Cahill said "It was a shock, a terrible shock."
Smith said she was "grateful" to British Prime Minister John Major for his appeals to the Thai government to obtain their freedom.
The two women were taken by Corrections Department officials to a police station, where arrangements would begin to have them deported to Britain. The Thai Foreign Ministry said the women would leave Thailand "by early next week."
King Bhumibol Adulyadej last week granted a pardon to the pair on "humanitarian grounds" and because of the close relations between Thailand and Britain.
The two women, both from Birmingham city in the English Midlands, were arrested on July 18, 1990, at Bangkok's Don Muang International Airport, as they were about to board a flight to Amsterdam en route to Gambia.
Customs officers found 66 pounds of heroin hidden in their luggage. The women said they had met a man in a Birmingham disco who had asked them to carry the packages to Gambia, but that they were unaware that they contained drugs.