A grandmother of nine will miss Christmas with her family after she was arrested and jailed abroad on drug trafficking charges.
Veronica Watson, from the Sunshine Coast, is currently detained at the Santana Women’s Penitentiary in São Paulo, Brazil, a country with some of the most notoriously overcrowded prisons in the world.
Ms Watson was arrested after local authorities accused her of trafficking drugs as she prepared to leave the country on December 1.
Ms Watson was allegedly found with just 1.5kg of cocaine in a hidden compartment inside her suitcase at the airport when customs officers struck.
Her daughter Sam, 59, said she was “shocked” when she discovered her mother had been detained.
She insists that her mother could never be guilty because her entire childhood was against drugs and breaking the law.
Watson never traveled outside Australia before his arrest and his daughter, who lives in western Sydney, said the whole situation “doesn’t seem real”.
Her mother claims that she was lured to São Paulo, a bustling Brazilian city of 11 million people, by the promise of a trade deal she had been offered online that required her to meet and sign some documents in person.
Veronica Watson, from the Sunshine Coast, has been arrested in Brazil after 1,483 grams of cocaine was allegedly found in a hidden compartment of her suitcase.
Sam said he tried to warn his mother about the deal because it “sounded dodgy,” but he went ahead with the trip without her knowledge.
“I can’t believe she did it,” Sam told 7News.
Stephen, Watson’s husband of 16 years, said he had met some people online who promised to pay for her vacation if she would sign the documents in person.
He said he only found out about the trip when Ms Watson asked him if he could go to Brazil for dinner one night.
“I said, ‘Why do you want to go to Brazil?’ She said, ‘I need to go there to sign the paperwork,’ and I said, ‘Do you even know what you’re signing?'” he explained.
Stephen asked Watson how well she knew the people she had met online and she responded that they had recently come into contact and it wasn’t a particularly personal relationship.
Mrs. Watson also informed her partner that the documents would be written in Portuguese and that “he would have someone there to explain it to him.
“I said, ‘that’s not enough’… (but) she insisted she would go,” Stephen added.
Ms Watson is being held at the Santana Women’s Penitentiary (pictured) in São Paulo, Brazil, and local authorities have confiscated her phone and cut off communications.
Now Stephen said it is “disastrous” and that “there are no words to explain how devastating” it was for Ms Watson to end up in jail.
In recent days, Sam received a letter from her mother sent from the Santana Women’s Penitentiary in which she explained how sorry she was..
‘Hi Sam, I’m mom. “I’m so sorry this happened,” he wrote.
“I wasn’t aware… I love (sic) you all so much.”
Local authorities confiscated his phone, so he has no other way to communicate with his family or those outside the prison.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that it is provide assistance to Mrs. Watson.
Now assume the perspective of a long and expensive legal battle in a foreign country.