A 33-year-old Filipina tourist who overstayed for six years in Hong Kong and her Pakistani boyfriend were each sentenced at at the High Court to more than five years in jail after they pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.Michelle Datu, 33, a recognizance holder, was sentenced to five and a half years in jail by Judge Remedios D’Almada.
The defendant’s boyfriend, Saleem Javed, got five years and four months for trafficking. He received another 18 months for drug possession, but the sentence was to run concurrently.
The prosecution said in a report that Datu, Javed and another woman named Lam were walking at the corner of Shantung and Shanghai streets in Yaumatei at 1:25am on Nov 19, 2016 when police stopped them for a check.
Datu and Javed threw away milk boxes that they were each carrying. When police inspected the milk boxes, they found that the one dumped by Datu had 27 grams of crystals while Javed’s was empty.
The drug found in Datu’s milk box turned out to be methamphetamine hydro-chloride, also known as “ice”.
The officers then searched a flat at 997 Canton Road where the two were staying and found 7.6g of ice in a room occupied by Javed. They also seized three small bottles with 0.007g of the drug and an electronic weighing scale.
The drug seized from the pair had a total street value of $10,962.
In mitigation, the defense counsel said that Datu, a single mother who has a 16-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son, came to Hong Kong as a tourist in January 2011 to visit her British boyfriend who sired her son.
The two lived together but separated in 2013 when the Briton discovered she was hooked on drugs. Datu had a New Zealander boyfriend next, but he also left her when he found out her addiction.
In 2014, she met Javed, an asylum seeker and Hong Kong ID holder who provided her accommodation, food and drugs in exchange for sex and housecleaning, the defense lawyer said. He did not give her a key to his room and told her not to enter it without his permission.
Datu was a victim who was not allowed to leave the house or meet friends, the lawyer said. Sometimes he allegedly assaulted her and hit her in the head.
When he gave her the milk box on Nov 29, 2016, she did not ask why it was full while his was empty because she was afraid he would hit her, the lawyer said.
But Javed through his lawyer said that when he was working at some construction site, Datu would be in Wanchai “prostituting” because she needed drugs. At one time he caught her letting a Caucasian man into the flat, the lawyer said.
The judge, however, said that what went on between the two had no bearing on the charges to which they pleaded guilty. She gave Datu a discount of 5 years and three months for pleading guilty, but added three months for committing an offense while on recognizance by Immigration.
