Former Brighton resident released from Pakistani jail

An advocate for Deborah Kerr announced on May 27 that the 37-year-old Brighton woman had been released from a Pakistani jail Wednesday after winning her appeal of a life sentence for drug trafficking.

Ms. Kerr traveled to Pakistan in January 2007 with her Pakastani common-law-husband for a three week visit. She was at the airport on February 1, 2007, waiting to board her flight for the trip back to Canada. She had passed all security checks, had her passport stamped, and was relaxing at a table in the pre-boarding lounge, awaiting her boarding announcement.

In accounts to friends, the woman told of a stranger coming to sit across from her at the lounge table. After sitting for approximately 10 minutes, the stranger arose and moved away from the table. Ms. Kerr noticed that he had left a travel bag beside his chair next to the table and thought that he was planning to return to pickup the bag.

When her flight was called for boarding, she was surrounded by a team of Narcotics Force officers. The unattended bag contained 6.22 kilos of heroine. Ms. Kerr was detained, arrested and charged as a drug trafficer.

After being imprisoned for close to a year in Islamabad she went to trial in Feb. 2008, was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in jail.

The other three defendants, all Pakistanis, were acquitted last August. One of the three, 61-year-old Saleem .Ahmed Khan, was her common-law partner and the father of two of her three children. They are now aged five and six. Saleem now lives in Pickering.

Her supporters always maintained there had been a miscarriage of justice.

Back in Canada it wasn't any simpler. Her children ended up in the care of relatives in the Belleville area.

With the assistance of former Liberal MP, Paul Macklin, Cramahe resident, Joan Byrnes, took up Ms. Kerr's cause. She established a website ( http://www.helpdebkerr.com/) and a trust fund through the CIBC to raise money for Ms. Kerr's legal appeal and for basic needs in prison where conditions are atrocious.

                                     Deborah Kerr

Tap water for drinking and bathing is rationed, the prison food was inedible and prisoners rely heavily on help from outside.

The sitting MP for Northumberland-Quinte West, Rick Norlock, has been assisting Ms. Kerr's family since 2007 when she was first arrested, working with her parents and children and getting the kids the kind of help they need. In addition, Canadian consular officials in Pakistan have been in touch with Ms. Kerr since February 2007.

Ms. Byrnes stated recently that Ms. Kerr told her she is in poor health. "She's very sick, she's very thin, she's very tired," Byrnes said. " She ingested a parasite from the food."

Ms. Byrnes also said Kerr told her she won't move back to Brighton and will settle elsewhere.