Béatrice Saubin

Béatrice Saubin (7 September 1959 – 2 November 2007) was a French woman convicted of drug smuggling in Malaysia who later wrote a best-selling book about her prison experiences. Raised by her grandmother in Romilly-sur-Seine, she dropped out of high school and travelled to Thailand, then Malaysia, having affairs with men in each country. Her Malaysian lover in Penang offered to marry her if she met him in Zürich. At age 20, in January 1980, she was detained at Penang International Airport when an airport x-ray scanner detected of pure grade heroin hidden in her suitcase.

While she claimed that her Malaysian lover had set her up, the Malaysian High Court rejected her story and sentenced her to death by hanging in June 1982. She was the first foreign national to be sentenced to death under Malaysia's strict drug trafficking law passed in 1976. Following a public outcry in France, the High Court reduced her sentence to life imprisonment in August 1982. During her years of incarceration, she learned Malay and Cantonese and worked on behalf of inmates in the prison hospital. She was released in 1990 for good conduct. She authored ''L'Épreuve'' (''My Ordeal'') (1991) about her prison experiences, and ''Quand la Porte S'Ouvre'' (''When the Door Opens'') (1995) about her return to freedom. Provided by Wikipedia