In an article reminiscent of Midnight Express, ABC Radio in Australia reports that two Australian women imprisoned in Thailand since 1997 for smuggling 115 grams (about 4 ounces) of heroin flew home to Sydney today under a prisoner tranfer program:

Two Australian women sentenced to 50-years jail in Thailand for drug trafficking will arrive in Sydney today after being released under a prisoner-exchange program. They will serve another five years of their original sentence in Australia before being eligible for parole. 38-year-old Jane McKenzie, and 36-year-old Deborah Spinner were sentenced in 1997, after being caught trying to smuggle 115-grams of heroin to Australia from Bangkok. Convicted with them was Sydney man Lyle Doniger who was freed two years ago, following a pardon from the king of Thailand.

The women were denied a similar pardon, because their paperwork wasn't filed correctly. McKenzie and Spinner had faced the death penalty for heroin trafficking, but their sentences were commuted to 50 years' jail after they pleaded guilty.

The women will have served 13 years in prison when they finally are released. It sounds like they were the mules. We wonder how the man, a fellow Australian, got a pardon. Did he really just fill out the paperwork correctly, or was he able to come up with another more valuable kind of paper, like currency?

This would never happens here, right? Wrong. As TChris wrote last week,