Armstrong considers herself a family woman. She says she's been without a partner for "many years, and that's a choice" - deciding to put her energies into her work and her familyl; She even moved to Australia to be closer to them. Unbeknownst to Ms Armstrong, a cousin signed her up to a dating website. "I was pretty horrified when she did, and said ‘I'm not looking for a man. I’m quite happy and content with my life’," she says. Ms Armstrong says she felt the website was “creepy”, but when an attractive man contacted her, she decided to give online dating a go. "[He] looked really nice, really friendly, warm, all of those things. He had a nice profile."
[Click
http://www.3news.co.nz/Sharon-Armstrong-sp... to watch part one of the interview with Sharon Armstrong - ]
Her family encouraged her to become friends with the man, who they believed to be a civil engineer who lived nearby, so Ms Armstrong and the man arranged to meet at her house the following weekend. The morning of the meeting, the man told Ms Armstrong that he was being called away for a prospective job, and the two stayed in touch via email. When the man told her he had been admitted to an expensive private hospital in London, Ms Armstrong sent him money. “I foolishly sent money to support him while he was there,” she says. She returned to New Zealand, and the man told her that as soon as he wrapped things up in London, he would join her there. Their relationship progressed, and when the man asked Ms Armstrong to go to Argentina to complete some business on his behalf and then meet him in London, she agreed. “By this stage, I’d had communication from a woman who I understood was in Spain. She was organising everything, organising the travel. I’d had some really nice emails from her.”
The night before Ms Armstrong was due to leave for London, she was rung by another person who advised her the documents would already be packaged in a suitcase, and she was expected to take the lot as it was. She then met a woman at the front of the hotel. "We got in the taxi and went to another place somewhere in town. She left me for about five minutes, went away, came back with the suitcase," she says. "It was huge... It was very solid." Ms Armstrong says the sheer size of the case led her to assume it was the correct weight. “I know that there have been questions about why didn’t I know about the weight, but I’d never ever come across a suitcase like this before. I’ve never had a suitcase that big.” Once she got back to her hotel room, she says the first thing she did was open the case.
"I couldn't see any documents in there, so I spoke to this man and I said ‘why can't I see them’, and he said ‘I don't know’. I said ‘obviously they’ve put them in the bottom… I want to open it, and have a look, and take the documents out’." The man told her to do so, which flustered her. He then advised her to speak to the woman in Spain. Ms Armstrong emailed the woman, asking her why the documents were hidden. The woman told her that there were “bad people here in Argentina, this is a very important contract”, and that it was hidden for her own safety. The woman also advised Ms Armstrong that should she be stopped by customs she should tell them about the documents and that they are welcome to take a look.
Ms Armstrong says she didn't think it could be drugs. "I don't know whether I wanted to believe them – I honestly don't know in terms of what I was thinking, but I was feeling reassured with the second time I raised it, particularly when she said ‘it's ok to tell them’." Ms Armstrong arrived at the airport and was waiting at Duty Free when she heard her name called. She went to the gate and was met by airport security and police. They told her they had identified something strange in her bag. "I was starting to feel apprehensive at this stage," she says. She was left to wait for a long time, then was taken to a room where her bag was opened and searched. She told them about the documents. "They lifted the bottom of the bag up and I immediately saw that there were three packages that were wrapped in what I thought was masking tape."
It was then that she started to think that it wasn't documents she was carrying after all. She was advised that police would be testing for drugs, and as soon as they slit the packages open, she could see it was some type of powder. The test was carried out and came back positive. "At that stage, I lost it," Ms Armstrong said. "The main thing I remember is saying ‘no, no, no, this isn't happening’."Ms Armstrong was then arrested. She acknowledges that she can’t convince everyone that she's telling the truth, but has the love and support of her family. "All I can do is keep telling it the way that it is. I had no intention of being part of a drug trafficking organisation. If I had known there were drugs in my bag, I would have gone to the police," she says.
"I'm not going to let this beat me."
http://www.3news.co.nz/Sharon-Armstrong-sp...
Posted By: Jen Fad
Monday, August 1st 2011 at 11:35AM
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