{"id":287377,"date":"2025-07-24T07:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T07:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287377\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T07:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T07:54:10","slug":"she-told-manchester-airport-cops-she-had-just-been-backpacking-until-they-checked-her-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287377\/","title":{"rendered":"She told Manchester Airport cops she had just been backpacking, until they checked her bag"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lauren Martin was spotted flying into Manchester Airport<\/p>\n

06:01, 24 Jul 2025Updated 06:24, 24 Jul 2025<\/p>\n

\"LaurenLauren Martin leaving Manchester Crown Court(Image: Jason Roberts \/Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

A judge has blasted a woman after she was caught bringing almost 50 kilos of cannabis into the UK, telling her: “I have no idea what possessed you.”<\/p>\n

Lauren Martin flew back from Thailand on April 5 this year when she was stopped by Border Force officers at Manchester Airport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked what was inside her large suitcase she claimed it was just clothing.<\/p>\n

Upon further inspection, officers found 31 vacuum sealed bags of the class B drug, weighing a total of 49 kilograms, Manchester Crown Court<\/a> heard.<\/p>\n

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\u201cShe was arrested and interviewed, and told officers she went to Thailand for a week backpacking,\u201d said prosecutor Elizabeth Walker.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said she met two people in the hotel and went out to drink. One of them asked her to take some clothes back for their girlfriend.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said she was expecting to meet their partner at the airport, and didn\u2019t check the cases as she felt it wasn\u2019t right to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

In mitigation, Betsy Hindle said her client had been subject to an electronically monitored curfew from 7pm to 7am and was receiving Universal Credit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea what possessed you to try and bring 49 kilos of cannabis into this country,\u201d said judge Paul Lawton.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou say there was no reward in it for you, I\u2019m not convinced that is true. I accept you were na\u00efve and pressured by others.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cYou need to understand how perilously close you came to going to prison. If this had been anything other than class B, you would have been going to prison for years and years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Judge Lawton said he felt able to suspend the sentence as Martin was \u2018capable of rehabilitation\u2019.<\/p>\n

Martin, of Worthing Street, Liverpool, was handed a 12 month prison term which was suspended for two years. She must also complete 100 hours of unpaid work.<\/p>\n

She had earlier pleaded guilty to being concerned in the fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of a class B drug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lauren Martin was spotted flying into Manchester Airport 06:01, 24 Jul 2025Updated 06:24, 24 Jul 2025 Lauren Martin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[30,2314,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-287377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-manchester-airport","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114907136907387036","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}