A Dutch woman, Mirjam Foekje van Twuijver, was today sentenced to eleven years in prison for smuggling almost 20 kilos of drugs to Iceland on Good Friday this year, RÚV reports. This is one of the toughest sentences ever passed in a case involving drugs in Iceland. The maximum sentence is 12 years.
Atli Freyr Fjölnisson was sentenced to five years in prison for receiving the narcotics and having the role to hand them over to others.
Mirjam was arrested, along with her 17-year-old daughter, at Keflavík Airport April 3. They were found to be carrying nine kilos of amphetamine, ten kilos of MDMA (sufficient to make close to 85,000 E-pills) and almost 200 grams of cocaine. Both mother and daughter were placed in police custody. The girl was released three weeks later, since there was nothing to indicate she knew of the drugs. She left the country shortly thereafter.
“This is a very harsh sentence, which most likely will be appealed,” remarked Mirjam’s defense lawyer, Jóhannes Árnason.
The case is one of the five largest drug smuggling cases ever in Iceland.
Two men have previously received comparable sentences for drug smuggling: Tryggvi Rúnar Guðjónsson was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December, 2001, but the Supreme Court of Iceland reduced the sentence to ten years. Austrian Kurt Fellner was sentenced to 12 years in prison in January of 2002, which the Supreme Court reduced to nine years.
