Free at last: Duped foreign ‘drug mules’ end their ordeal as they fly out of Hong Kong after months behind bars
Three foreigners jailed over drug charges fly home in the final chapter of a legal nightmare
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 11 November, 2015, 1:37pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 11 November, 2015, 10:53pm
Lana Lam
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Celia Eberhard at Hong Kong International Airport this morning. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
Three foreigners jailed in Hong Kong for a crime they did not commit underwent the final chapter in a months-long legal nightmare this morning when they boarded flights home to the United States and Europe - a moment they thought might never come.
“The last time I was here, I went straight to jail,” said Celia Eberhard, who was arrested in April last year at Hong Kong International Airport before attempting to board a flight to Australia and charged with drug trafficking.
Eberhard, from California, was one of six people who spent between 10 to 18 months in jail without trial after Hong Kong customs officers found several kilograms of crystal methamphetamine in her luggage.
The six, who were from Australia, Europe and the US and who did not know each other before their arrests, were freed last Friday by a High Court judge who acquitted them after the Department of Justice withdrew the charges due to a lack of evidence.
They had all maintained their innocence and claimed they were duped into carrying items out of Hong Kong by a drug syndicate and did not know drugs were inside.
On Monday, immigration officials gave the six foreign nationals a 48-hour ultimatum to leave the city or face legal action over the expiration of their visas while they were behind bars.
For Eberhard, despite the rush, it was the moment she had been waiting for.
“I couldn’t be happier,” she said at 7.30am this morning as she checked in her luggage for her flight to Los Angeles via Tokyo.
The 68-year-old grandmother said heading home marked the end of months of anguish.
“It was the most horrific ordeal I’ve ever experienced,” she said. Of the six released last Friday, she had spent the most time, at 18 months, on remand.
“I’m getting my dignity and self worth back because it was gone when I was in prison. I don’t think anyone deserves that.”
Hendrikus Teutscher also flew out this morning. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
For Hendrikus Teutscher, 75, the harsh memories of jail were still fresh in his mind.
“It was one of the worst experiences of my life,” he said.
But his lasting impressions were positive, and he thanked those who supported him through the ordeal including prison chaplain John Wotherspoon.
Tonight, Teutscher’s son will meet him when he lands in Amsterdam before taking a one-hour train ride to his hometown.
“Finally, it feels good,” he said.
Each person carried a sealed letter from the Immigration Department that they were ordered to hand to officers at the border checkpoint to let the authorities know they had left the city.
Eberhard will hit the books when she gets back to California to renew her real estate licence, which expired while she was on remand.
Wearing a bright red Los Angeles Angels baseball jersey, that of her home team, she thanked those who had acted as angels of her own.
“There were so many wonderful, thoughtful, unselfish people who helped me, not only with kindness but with food and money and laughter,” Eberhard said, referring to supporters from church groups.
Her first point of call back in California will be to see her children and granddaughter. “It will be so great to see my family again,” she said.
William Moorman, 47, also left the city this morning, bound for Kentucky in the US.
