Sydney accused drug mule to face KL court
AAP
December 19, 2014, 3:38 am
A Sydney woman is preparing to face court in Kuala Lumpur where her lawyers say she was caught unknowingly carrying drugs.
Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, 51, will on Friday face charges of carrying 1.5kg of crystal meth into Malaysia, and a mandatory death sentence if she's convicted.
Her lawyers say the mum from suburban southwest Sydney is a "naive and innocent mule" who was deceived.
Lawyer Tania Scivetti said her client had not yet come to terms with how grave her predicament is.
"I don't think it has really hit her yet," she told AAP ahead of the appearance.
Exposto was intercepted while transiting through Kuala Lumpur airport on December 7.
She mistakenly followed the other passengers off her flight from Shanghai and had to return back through customs and immigration to join her planned flight to Melbourne.
There, say customs authorities, she volunteered her bag for scanning.
The ice, worth the equivalent of $A100,000, was found in a stitched secret compartment.
