In an open letter to the Aberdeen Evening Express, freed drug smuggler Sandra Gregory has thanked its readers for helping her win an early release.

Gregory (34) wrote: “I would like to thank Evening Express readers for the support they have shown both my dear parents and myself over the past few years.”

The former teacher, from Pitcaple, was convicted of trying to smuggle 100g of heroin out of Thailand – a charge she admitted – and was sentenced to 25 years in jail in February 1993.

A general amnesty in 1996 reduced her sentence to 22 years, and after four years in the notorious Lar Yao women’s prison in Bangkok she was brought back to Britain under a prisoner exchange treaty.

In a surprise move just over a week ago, she was released from Cookham Wood prison in Kent after a Royal Pardon from the King of Thailand.

In her letter, Gregory said: “I am quite sure that I would not have been granted a full pardon if it had not been for the strength of feeling towards my case here at home and all the letters that so many people wrote to the authorities.

“Coming home I really am quite overwhelmed at the amount of support and number of people who have done so very much to help.”

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