WA woman Donna Nelson given permission to meet her granddaughter after drug importation trial delay

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A 57-year-old West Australian woman accused of attempting to import almost 2kg of methamphetamine into Japan may spend two years in custody before she gets to trial. Donna Nelson’s family say she was duped into travelling to Asia by a romance scam and maintain she is innocent. Her trial has been due to start this week, but now her lawyers say it could be delayed until January.

Transcript

00:00Donna Nelson has spent almost 18 months at Chiba prison.

00:04Her family says she's allowed to leave her cell for just half an hour each day,

00:09only permitted to speak Japanese,

00:11and barred from communicating with anyone outside the prison, aside from her lawyer.

00:15Mum's such a social person, so to think of her just existing in her own bubble is really...

00:26I don't know how she's surviving.

00:31She was arrested after flying into Narita airport on January 4th last year,

00:37authorities seizing 1.9 kilograms of methamphetamine from her luggage.

00:41Miss Nelson's trial was supposed to have begun on Thursday,

00:45but her defence team applied for it to be delayed after prosecutors submitted their brief only days earlier,

00:51meaning it might be another six months before her case is heard.

00:54Right now they told us it can be in January because there's many trial cases waiting for trial.

01:03Her daughter Crystal was on a plane to Japan when she got the news.

01:07She hasn't been allowed to see her mother.

01:09But this week a court did agree to let Miss Nelson's three-year-old granddaughter inside Chiba prison,

01:14the first contact Miss Nelson has had with any family member for 18 months.

01:19She was crying all the time, but she was really looking really happy,

01:24her face lighted up, and talking to the girl.

01:29Before her arrest, Miss Nelson was the chair of an Indigenous health service and director of a WA charity,

01:34and once ran as a candidate for the Greens.

01:37Her family has always maintained she was conned into travelling into Asia by a man met online two years prior.

01:43We were aware of her conversating with this guy and her plans for her future with him,

01:48and this wasn't even something that was on our radar for her to be wary of.

01:54Authorities caution romance scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

01:58In WA, 22 scams have been reported so far this year, with more than $1 million lost.

02:04Sometimes they're just tricked.

02:05They think they're just taking a package or something quite legitimate for somebody they believe to be genuine,

02:12and then find out that they've taken drugs when they get caught at the border.

02:17The WA government has raised the case with the Australian ambassador to Japan.

02:21It's a citizen of Western Australia, and those representations have been made at the highest level.

02:27If convicted, Miss Nelson could be sentenced to more than 10 years in jail.

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