A court in Mombasa on Tuesday sentenced a middle-aged Tanzanian woman to 45 years in prison for trafficking heroin worth Ksh16 million.
While delivering his judgement, Justice Martin Rabera found the suspect guilty of trafficking 5,389 grams of heroin which is said to have been concealed in a black bag.
Having been found guilty, the suspect was fined Ksh48 million, which is three times the value of the heroin drugs she attempted to smuggle.
She was also handed a 10-year jail term for the offence which the court stated was contrary to Section 4(a) of the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act No. 4 of 1994.
The court further dished out a 35-year sentence to the woman for a crime it did not specify, bringing the entire jail term to 45 years.
"The accused committed the offence jointly with others not before the court, on March 14, 2021, at Moi International Airport in Changamwe Sub-county within Mombasa County," read part of a statement by the ODPP.
"In his judgement, Hon. Rabera ruled that the prosecution, led by Prosecution Counsel Barbara Sombo, proved its case to the standard provided under the law."
According to the court, the 16 prosecution witnesses gave corroborative evidence against the accused, placing the suspect at the scene of the crime.
The court also ruled that the accused failed to adduce enough evidence, leaving the court with no choice but to convict and sentence her as stipulated by the law.
In a similar scenario, a Kenyan woman was in December last year arrested at in India while smuggling Ksh280 million worth of Cocaine.
The woman was arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officers based in India in an intelligence-led operation.
According to DRI, the drugs were concealed in two black-coloured polythene packets containing a white powdery substance, a hair conditioner bottle and a body wash bottle.
