PESHAWAR, March 4: A Turkish woman, Fatima Uskurat, was awarded life term by the special judge (control of narcotics substance) on Wednesday. Judge Abdur Rehman also fined her Rs300,000 in default of which she would undergo three years more imprisonment.

The woman, who faced handicapped due to non-availability of an interpreter during her trial, claimed that she was trapped by an international gang of drug traffickers and the luggage belonged to an African lady and not her. She added she was not aware about presence of narcotics in the bags.

The woman was arrested at the Peshawar International Airport on March 21, 2003. An inspector of the Airport Security Force spotted her in the international departure lounge. On search of two bags she carried the official recovered 21kgs of heroin.

The court had earlier dismissed an application of the woman requesting the court to order for the calculation of percentage and composition of the banned ingredients in the seized narcotics.

The defendant had claimed that under section 3 of the CNSA enacted on July 11, 1997, calculation of percentage was binding. The defence counsel on Wednesday pointed out that with the dismissal of that application he could not defend his client properly. Last year, he said, the same court had accepted a plea of another accused charged with possessing 35kgs of heroin.

The counsel added that after calculation of percentage in that case it was found that the banned ingredient was only seven kilograms of the seized narcotics, thus he was sentenced for seven kgs of heroin and not for 35 kgs. He stated that the said application remained pending for various months and during final stages of the trial it was dismissed.