A SPANISH teenager who was sentenced to a whole life term in an Omani prison for drug trafficking has been pardoned by the country’s Sultan.
Fatima Ofkir (pictured above) was just 18 years old when she was caught planning to smuggle 7kg of morphine from a hotel in Oman to her home country in August 2018.
The Barcelona native was sentenced to life in a women’s prison and was told her only way out would be to choose the death penalty instead, which her lawyers said she considered in her darkest moments.
During her seven-year stint at the Moscat prison, Fatima was forced to wear a burka and pray five times per day. She could only speak to her family for 60 seconds every two weeks.
However, the Sultan of Oman decided to pardon Fatima after years of pleading by the Spanish government and other supporters.
The Sultan hands out a series of pardons each year after the muslim holiday of Ramadan, with Fatima making the amnesty list for 2025.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Albares said in a statement to Catalunya Radio that Fatima landed in Barcelona El-Prat airport on Sunday morning.
Albares said Fatima was ’emotional’ and that the most important thing for her now is to ‘reunite with her parents and return to normality.’
He said the government had been trying to secure her release for quite some time, using all the diplomatic means at their disposal.
Albares thanked the Sultan ‘for his humanity’ and for ‘this gesture of friendship toward Spain.’
He added: ‘Fatima hasn’t been able to return to Spain for many years. We all now have to give Fatima time and allow her to return to being a Spanish citizen, living as normal a life as possible from the very beginning…
‘She is a very young person. Sometimes one can make mistakes, and of course the important thing is that she has this pardon, that this sentence is over.’
Fatima had been recruited by a Spanish drug-trafficking gang, which sent her to Oman to pick up the morphine shipment.
The plot was rumbled, however, and Omani police raided her hotel room and found the package in a closet.
Vosseler Abogados blasted Fatima’s first lawyer, accusing him of being more concerned with ‘collecting the money raised by her family in Spain without diligently covering the case, in a trial in which Fatima was completely helpless, unable to speak Arabic or understand anything that was happening.’
At just 18 years of age, Fatima was the youngest Spaniard to ever serve a sentence in a foreign country.
