Smuggler mother jailed

Alison McKinnon smuggled £300,000 of heroin

A British mother has been sentenced to five years in a Turkish prison after being found guilty of smuggling more than £300,000 of heroin.

Alison McKinnon, 31, from Devon, was arrested in March after police found three kilos of the drug strapped around her waist at an Istanbul airport.

The prosecutor had asked for a longer sentence but the panel of judges may have opted to be more lenient because McKinnon gave police information about some of her alleged Turkish accomplices.

With good behaviour she could be released after serving about two years of her sentence at a prison in north west Turkey.

McKinnon claimed she was forced into smuggling the drugs by her lover who owed money to gangsters.

Her ex-husband Iain, 38, who looks after their two children at his home in Barnstaple, North Devon, had earlier voiced his hopes that the court would be lenient.

"I hope it takes into account the time she has already spent in custody," he said.

Mummy is OK - I love you both a lot

Alison McKinnon

McKinnon was arrested at Ataturk Airport, as she prepared to board a plane bound for Britain.

She wrote a letter to her 10-year-old daughter Ione and son Keir, seven, from her prison cell to tell them she was all right.

"I hope you are both being good and you are being good at school," she wrote.

"Mummy is OK. I love you both a lot. I am always thinking of you both. You are in my dreams."

When she was arrested McKinnon told police she was not a heroin user.

Turkish newspapers reported that her body-piercing activated metal detectors at the airport, resulting in a body search by police.

Three Turkish men were also arrested at the same time in connection with the incident.