He said Floviance Owino’s sentence has been suspended for two years. [PHOTO:
MOSES OMUSULA/STANDARD]
NAIROBI: A Kenyan woman who was sentenced to hang in China for drug trafficking may get a fixed term or have her sentence reduced to life imprisonment if she is of good conduct.
A local lawyer representing Floviance Owino and her family said the two scenarios were possible under the Chinese law but only if she is deemed as having conducted herself well by the authorities.
Speaking in his Nairobi office yesterday, lawyer Okweh Achiando also revealed Owino's sentence had been suspended for two years.
Mr Achiando said he was in close communication with the Kenyan Embassy in China to have a trip organised for the family to visit Owino.
"Her execution has not been carried out yet. She was sentenced to death but that sentence was suspended for two years and that is a reprieve. If her conduct is good, the sentence could be reduced to life imprisonment or she could have a fixed term. A fixed term would mean she would serve for a certain period of time and get released. Her case is coming up for review soon," Achiando explained.
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The lawyer explained that the reason Owino cannot serve her sentence in Kenya, as her family had hoped, is that Kenya and China have no bilateral treaty for prison swaps.
"Kenyans serving a sentence in China cannot come home to serve the sentence the same way the Chinese serving sentences here cannot go back to China to serve their sentences," Mr Achiando said.
He said they have contracted a Chinese lawyer by the name Benjamin Lo, despite the fact that China had appointed one for her.
"I have been in close communication with the Chinese lawyer since I cannot represent Owino in China," he said.
Achiando said although they had made strides in establishing more about Owino's case, they were still in the dark on a few issues.
"We do not know who she was in the company of when she was arrested or the circumstances that surrounded her arrest. We also do not have the details of the court proceedings that led to her sentencing but we hope to establish all these soon," he explained.
Achiando said the Government has and is doing a great job trying to intervene in Owino's case. He said no Kenyan has ever been executed in China.
Owino went missing in May 2013 and her family only learned about her whereabouts last Thursday when they received a call from China on her impending execution.
