An elderly British\u00a0woman suspected of smuggling cocaine into Portugal on a cruise ship\u00a0has reportedly been taken to hospital.<\/p>\n
Sue Clarke, 70, was remanded in\u00a0custody on December 5 after being arrested a day earlier on a cruise liner with \u00a32\u00a0million worth of\u00a0cocaine\u00a0when the ship docked at Lisbon Port from the Bahamas.<\/p>\n
Her husband Roger, 72, was also held by Portuguese police who boarded MC Marco Polo during the second-to-last stop of their 33-day transatlantic cruise and found nine kilos of the class-A drug in four suitcases in their cabin.<\/p>\n
Mrs Clarke suffered a hypertensive crisis – a sharp rise in blood pressure –\u00a0and was taken to a prison hospital around six miles\u00a0from\u00a0Tires Women’s Prison,\u00a0Portuguese daily Correio da Manha reported.<\/p>\n
Her condition was unknown late on Thursday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bizarre smuggling attempts<\/aside>\n
It was not known if Mr Clarke, who\u00a0was being held at a men’s prison in Lisbon, had been told about his wife’s condition.<\/p>\n
Mr Clarke had reportedly told fellow passengers that they had bought the cases for just \u00a3160\u00a0on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, adding they\u00a0would have cost them \u00a31,500 in Harrods.<\/p>\n
Portuguese police have said\u00a0they had intended arresting the couple when the ship arrived at the Madeiran capital Funchal from the Bahamas – but that stop on the tour was cancelled because of bad weather.<\/p>\n
They also said it was possible the cocaine, which was hidden\u00a0inside false bottoms in the luggage – was\u00a0intended for London because the next and final stop on the cruise was Tilbury in Essex.<\/p>\n
The Policia Judiciaria said earlier this week the couple had been arrested thanks to information from the UK’s National Crime Agency.<\/p>\n
The couple\u00a0lived in Guardamar del Segura near Alicante on the Costa Blanca.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An elderly British\u00a0woman suspected of smuggling cocaine into Portugal on a cruise ship\u00a0has reportedly been taken to hospital. Sue Clarke, 70, was remanded in\u00a0custody on December 5 after being arrested a day earlier on a cruise liner with \u00a32\u00a0million worth of\u00a0cocaine\u00a0when the ship docked at Lisbon Port from the Bahamas. Her husband Roger, 72, was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}