WESTERN BUREAU — A 37 year-old woman who was held with drugs Sunday was yesterday convicted in the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court.

The woman, Anita Bryan, a British mother of one, was caught with 33 pounds of ganja while on her way out of the island.

She was yesterday fined $225,000 and is to spend the next six months behind bars for the offence.

Bryan told the court yesterday that she did not know the drug was in her luggage. But she pleaded guilty to the charges against her, acknowledging that she should have checked her luggage before going to the airport.

“I’m not seeking to divert the blame…,” she told RM Valerie Stephens.

At the same time, in an apparent plea for leniency, she informed the court she had left her child with an elderly person.

For possession of the drug, she was fined $15,000 or six months. For dealing in it, she was fined $52,000 or six months. And for attempting to export it, she was fined an additional $158,000 or six months and sentenced to six months behind bars.

Meanwhile, a Jamaican single mother, Maxine Boyne, was last Thursday sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined $240,000 after she was caught trying to smuggle cocaine from the island in her stomach.

A tearful Boyne was led from the courtroom after her sentence was handed down and she was separated from her crying 13 year-old son.

The Westmoreland resident was stopped at the airport in Montego Bay on October 24 while on her way to London. She was later brought to the Cornwall Regional Hospital where she excreted 125 pellets of cocaine weighing over two pounds.

As a result, she was arrested and charged for breaches of the Dangerous Drugs Act.