{"id":253633,"date":"2025-09-25T12:56:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T12:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253633\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T12:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T12:56:13","slug":"donna-nelson-wa-grandmother-to-serve-six-year-sentence-after-tokyo-court-quashes-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253633\/","title":{"rendered":"Donna Nelson: WA grandmother to serve six-year sentence after Tokyo court quashes appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

WA grandmother Donna Nelson \u2014 who was fighting a drug smuggling conviction in Japan \u2014 has had her appeal dismissed.<\/p>\n

The 59-year-old Perth woman was last year given a six-year-sentence for bringing 2kg of meth into the country in January 2023.<\/p>\n

Ms Nelson has always maintained she was tricked by a romance scam and had no idea there were drugs in her suitcase.<\/p>\n

However, three appeal judges in the Tokyo High Court<\/a> on Thursday ruled she will need to serve the remainder of her sentence in a Japanese prison.<\/p>\n

Nelson was convicted at trial in Japan last December after her shock arrest at Narita International Airport in January 2023 when customs officials found the drugs hidden in a false-bottom suitcase she was carrying.<\/p>\n

The court also fined her one million yen, equivalent to $10,400.<\/p>\n

The Perth community leader and one-time Greens political candidate has always maintained her innocence, insisting she was the victim of a romance scam.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

At trial, Nelson told a Japanese courtroom she had no idea the man she believed she was going to marry had hidden the drugs in the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no knowledge that there was methamphetamine in the luggage,\u201d she told the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was deceived by Kelly, a man who I was considering a marriage partnership with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trial court accepted she had indeed been the victim of a sophisticated romance scam, but found she ought to have been more suspicious.<\/p>\n

Nelson and her legal team said she received the suitcase from an acquaintance of a man she met on a dating site in 2020, and then brought it from Laos to Tokyo as instructed.<\/p>\n

The grandmother had business class flights booked for her under the guise the suitcase \u2014 containing the meth \u2014 would be sold in her lover\u2019s boutique store in Japan.<\/p>\n

\"ACamera IconA court sketch of Donna Nelson in 2024. Credit: Yoshitaka Enomoto\/Yoshitaka Enomoto<\/p>\n

The man told her he was a Nigerian business owner, her lawyers said.<\/p>\n

She was supposed to meet the man in Japan but he never showed up, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Nelson was arrested on the spot and later charged with violating the stimulants control and customs laws.<\/p>\n

Three of Ms Nelson\u2019s five daughters and some of her grandchildren were in Tokyo to hear the court\u2019s decision on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Ms Nelson\u2019s family had flagged that next may come diplomatic efforts to have Ms Nelson serve out her sentence in Australia.<\/p>\n

But that can be a complicated, and often years long process involving the Federal Government, that is far from guaranteed to succeed.<\/p>\n

Donna Nelson was taken from court back to a prison cell on Thursday, while her scammer \u2018Kelly\u2019 remains at large.<\/p>\n

She has been behind bars under the strict conditions of a Japanese prison since her arrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WA grandmother Donna Nelson \u2014 who was fighting a drug smuggling conviction in Japan \u2014 has had her…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":253634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,9647,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-253633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-courts-justice","10":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115265050288838163","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}