Court / Woman jailed for drugs supply

A LERWICK woman has been imprisoned for 16 months for being concerned in the supply of class A drugs.

Violet Robertson, 47, of the town’s Norgaet, admitted supplying heroin and cocaine on 5 June this year.

Police acting on a tip off arrested Robertson at the NorthLink ferry terminal when she came off the ferry from Aberdeen and took her to the police station.

After a strip search found nothing, she was taken to hospital where she removed two packets from her vagina, one of which contained controlled drugs

She confirmed she had been given the drugs in Aberdeen as a favour to a person she was in debt to and who she knew would be selling them on.

Tommy Allan, defending, said the case was “depressingly straight forward”.

Robertson, he said was a “vulnerable lady” with a high level of need who had been taken advantage of by her weakness.

Threats had been made to her family as well as herself, Allan said, and she was in a position, which she felt, left her with no choice in the matter.

Robertson stood to gain nothing but was being used as a “mule” by other people who were praying on her vulnerability.

Sheriff Ian Cruickshank said that the law was that Robertson had to be imprisoned unless there were “exceptional circumstances”. While Robertson’s circumstances were sad, they were not exceptional.

He reduced her sentence from two years to 16 months in prison to take account of her early guilty plea.