A British woman convicted of drug smuggling in Laos who returned to the UK to serve her sentence has lost her legal challenge against her continued detention.
Two judges said they were in no doubt Samantha Orobator "was treated unjustly in Laos", but they rejected her claim that she was being detained in the UK unlawfully.
Lord Justice Dyson, sitting with Mr Justice Tugendhat, set the minimum term she must serve at 18 months.
At a hearing last year the court was told that the 20-year-old committed the crime only under "extreme duress" after being raped and threatened with murder.
Orobator, from Peckham, south London, was accused of carrying 24oz (680g) of heroin when arrested at Wattay airport in the capital, Vientiane, in August 2008 as she tried to board a flight. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Her lawyers applied to the High Court for a judicial review of the decision by the Ministry of Justice on August 18 last year not to release her from custody following her return to the UK under the 1984 Repatriation of Prisoners Act.
The court heard Orobator faced the death penalty, but became pregnant in jail by "clandestine artificial insemination" and was allowed to return to the UK to serve her life sentence. She later gave birth to a baby girl and is currently in London's Holloway Prison.
Her QC, Edward Fitzgerald, said two Nigerian men had coerced her into taking possession of the drugs by taking her passport and threatening to kill her if she did not carry the heroin to Australia.
He said: "They further intimidated her by assaulting and raping her." It was argued on her behalf that her trial in Laos was a "flagrant denial of justice".
Dismissing the application, Lord Justice Dyson concluded: "We are in no doubt that, by the standards of our justice system, the claimant was treated unjustly in Laos. But her claim that she had been detained unlawfully in the UK could not succeed because she could not satisfy the high test that she had suffered "a flagrant denial" of justice in Laos.
