Brit Laura Plummer faces at least 10 months in hellhole Egyptian prison before appeal… as she’s forced to bribe inmates with food to stop attacks
JAILED Brit Laura Plummer will spend at least ten months in a notorious Egyptian jail even if her appeal is successful, The Sun can reveal.
The shop assistant from Hull was pinning her hopes of an early release from her three-year sentence at Qena prison on the appeal, having been jailed for flying to the Middle Eastern country with banned Tramadol pills in her suitcase.
[bc_video video_id="5695523105001" account_id="5067014667001" player_id="default" embed="in-page" caption="Brit Pete Farmer on how he was locked up in cockroach infested jail in Egypt like Laura Plummer "]
But her family has revealed that a judge won't even consider it for ten months, with sister Jayne Synclair, 40, saying: "Her lawyer has told us that that is the time it normally takes. It's ridiculous.
"She will have served almost a third of her sentence before her appeal is even considered. They have no urgency at all over there."
It comes after mother Roberta Synclair faced a nightmare 100-mile trek across Egypt to Qena where she thought Laura was starting her three-year sentence.
But when she got there, guards said her daughter Laura, who was beaten up and robbed by other prisoners for "being foreign", had been transferred after a single night.
Laura's sister Jayne Synclair, 40, says her mother was "absolutely distraught", adding: "She took this long taxi trip only to be told they had moved her again. It's mental torture."
Meanwhile, disturbing reports suggest Laura has resorted to bribing inmates with food sent by her family to stop them from beating up and robbing her because "she is foreign".
The Foreign Office told her sisters not to travel to Egypt because there is no way to tell where she is but, with the help of a lawyer, the family believe she is being held in Hurghada while the Egyptian authorities decide where to send her next.
Despite the heartache, the move has given the family fresh hope that Laura might be able to serve her sentence in a safer prison close to the British Embassy in Cairo rather than the hellhole jail in Qena.
A court in the Red Sea resort of Safaga jailed shop worker Laura, 33, on Boxing Day for three years over 290 tramadol pills she had in her suitcase when she arrived in the country in October.
A judge dismissed her argument that she was taking them for back pain suffered by hubby Omar Abd El Azim Mohamed Saad, 33, who she was visiting.
It was thought she had been due to be transferred to the notorious Qena prison – famed for torture and beatings and home to killers and jihadists – at the end of the week.
But she was woken in the early hours of Wednesday and driven the 100 miles in chains in an armoured truck to the cockroach-infested jail.
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Mum Roberta Synclair, 63, said: "I didn't get to say goodbye. She'll have been terrified."
UK envoys fearful over her move to the prison had tried and failed to get her taken to one in Cairo which is near to our embassy and where another Brit is held.
The Foreign Office said: "We're assisting her and her family."
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[bc_video video_id="5695523105001" account_id="5067014667001" player_id="default" embed="in-page" caption="Brit Pete Farmer on how he was locked up in cockroach infested jail in Egypt like Laura Plummer "]