00:00Donna Nelson has spent almost 18 months at Chiba prison.
00:04Her family says she's allowed to leave her cell for just half an hour each day,
00:09only permitted to speak Japanese,
00:11and barred from communicating with anyone outside the prison, aside from her lawyer.
00:15Mum's such a social person, so to think of her just existing in her own bubble is really...
00:26I don't know how she's surviving.
00:31She was arrested after flying into Narita airport on January 4th last year,
00:37authorities seizing 1.9 kilograms of methamphetamine from her luggage.
00:41Miss Nelson's trial was supposed to have begun on Thursday,
00:45but her defence team applied for it to be delayed after prosecutors submitted their brief only days earlier,
00:51meaning it might be another six months before her case is heard.
00:54Right now they told us it can be in January because there's many trial cases waiting for trial.
01:03Her daughter Crystal was on a plane to Japan when she got the news.
01:07She hasn't been allowed to see her mother.
01:09But this week a court did agree to let Miss Nelson's three-year-old granddaughter inside Chiba prison,
01:14the first contact Miss Nelson has had with any family member for 18 months.
01:19She was crying all the time, but she was really looking really happy,
01:24her face lighted up, and talking to the girl.
01:29Before her arrest, Miss Nelson was the chair of an Indigenous health service and director of a WA charity,
01:34and once ran as a candidate for the Greens.
01:37Her family has always maintained she was conned into travelling into Asia by a man met online two years prior.
01:43We were aware of her conversating with this guy and her plans for her future with him,
01:48and this wasn't even something that was on our radar for her to be wary of.
01:54Authorities caution romance scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
01:58In WA, 22 scams have been reported so far this year, with more than $1 million lost.
02:04Sometimes they're just tricked.
02:05They think they're just taking a package or something quite legitimate for somebody they believe to be genuine,
02:12and then find out that they've taken drugs when they get caught at the border.
02:17The WA government has raised the case with the Australian ambassador to Japan.
02:21It's a citizen of Western Australia, and those representations have been made at the highest level.
02:27If convicted, Miss Nelson could be sentenced to more than 10 years in jail.
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