Review the Yuyee case

Wild cats,
cocaine and
claims of a
police set-up >>>>
Superstar 'Yuyee' is serving 15 years
for importing a tiny quantity of
drugs, but her Spanish celebrity
husband says she is the victim of a
nefarious revenge plot ... A calendar in the children’s room marks
the number of days their mother has been
in jail. Alongside it, pictures and drawings
they have made of her are pinned to a
large board.
The case was on the front page of all local
newspapers last year: superstar
Chachchaya “Yuyee” Cuesta Ramos
sentenced to 15 years for smuggling 251
milligrammes of cocaine.
It was the result, her family says, of an
ordeal that involved a leopard rescue,
encounters with powerful officials and a
trumped-up drugs charge.
As the three Ramos children — aged three,
eight and 11 — adapt to life without their
mother, Sarit, the eldest, has a new
obsession: trying to find the truth in
Yuyee’s case.
Since last July he has printed every news
article on the internet about his mother’s
case.
“The kids are going crazy,” said their
father Francisco Ramos, a Spanish TV
presenter..............>>>>>>>>>>THE RESCUE
Mr Ramos and Yuyee, 42, have been
involved in wildlife rescue efforts for
more than a decade and have been
volunteers at the Thai Animal Guardians
Association (AGA) since 2002. In that
time, the couple rescued more than 1,000
animals and released them into the wild.
When they received a phone call in May
2012 about a juvenile leopard being held
at a remote house, they were able to
rescue it and take it to authorities at Dusit
Zoo a few days later.
The leopards are normally sent to Europe
in suitcases, where they can fetch a price
of 10,000 euros (about 380,000 baht). A
rare black leopard, or one with a perfect
pattern, can fetch up to five times that.
The value of the four to five-month-old
Indochinese leopard Mr Ramos and Yuyee
rescued was estimated at about half a
million baht.
“If we had known that leopard was going
to somebody powerful, we wouldn’t have
gone,” said Mr Ramos, who is a
veterinarian and a TV host for the
Discovery Channel.
A week after the rescue, Mr Ramos said,
two uniformed policemen arrived at the
couple’s house on a motorcycle and told
them to prepare 400,000 baht. They gave
no reason for demanding the cash.
But several weeks later, police raided their
house, accusing the couple of possessing
wild animals. Yuyee explained that the 50
animals had been rescued and were being
held in “quarantine” prior to release into
national parks. Officers confiscated four
snakes and an owl.
AGA secretary-general Roger Lohanan
accompanied the police on the day of the
incident in an attempt to explain to them
that Yuyee was a volunteer, and that the
animals were injured and could not yet be
released. He said the organisation’s
volunteers are usually exempt from the
law, as they work together with forestry
officials.
“But there was probably a complication
on that day, such as the large media
presence at the time,” he told Spectrum. That the law provides an exemption for
the possession of protected wild animals
only for research purposes leaves many
animal-lovers at risk of arrest, said Mr
Lohanan, when in fact they could simply
be helping a bird with broken wings.
“The problem with Thai law is that it is
selective,” he said. “[Authorities] turn a
blind eye to those with connections and
animal traffickers.”
A month after the raid, Mr Ramos said,
plain clothes policemen returned in a
black pickup truck, dressed in boots,
pants and white shirts, and demanded the
400,000 baht payment.
“I asked why we had to pay,” said Mr
Ramos. “They said ‘kid noi, kid noi’ [think
about it]. Then they told me it [the
leopard] was going to be sent to someone.
The money was for the damage as a result
of setting the leopard free.”
Mr Ramos refused to pay. .......‘SHE WAS FRAMED’
On Nov 10, 2012, Mr Ramos received an
anonymous phone call. “Mr Frank, come
to the airport. Yuyee has drugs.”
The call came 20 minutes before Yuyee’s
plane from Vietnam landed at Don
Mueang airport. The former model has a
previous history of illegal drug use, but
her husband says she had been clean for
more than a decade.
When Mr Ramos arrived at the airport 10
minutes after the plane had landed, he
asked to see the cocaine that Yuyee had
allegedly been caught with. The police
refused, saying they had already analysed
the drugs.
According to the original police arrest
statement seen by Spectrum, Yuyee was
carrying 5mg of cocaine — about 12 baht
worth based on current street value, and
substantially less than a single line of the
drug.
But Yuyee was eventually convicted of
importing 50 times that amount.
In the restroom at the airport, Mr Ramos
said a man who he assumed was a plain
clothes policeman approached him and
told him in English: “Remember, you still
have to pay 400,000 baht.”
According to court documents seen by
Spectrum, a police officer testified that he
went inside the women’s restroom after
his colleague heard a scream. He found
Yuyee inside. The officer searched her
bag, where he said he found the cocaine
inside an M&M’s packet.
Yuyee was denied access to a lawyer and
was not given a urine test despite asking
for one at the police station.
She initially confessed that the cocaine
was hers, and that it had been left over
from her trip in Vietnam. Later on in
court, she would testify that since it was a
very small amount, the police at the
airport had promised to release her if she
signed a confession.
In her revised testimony, Yuyee claimed
that she felt sick and went to the
restroom to vomit. She said a stranger
then suggested that she eat some
chocolate, and offered her the packet of
M&M’s.
The moment Yuyee signed a confession at
the airport, she was handcuffed and
taken to Don Muang police station, where
she was jailed for two days. Mr Ramos
paid 10,000 baht bail, and was given back
his cell phone — which had been
confiscated by police after he used it to
record parts of the arrest. The memory
card was missing.
The trial in May last year lasted only three
hours, with four witnesses for the
prosecution.
Mr Ramos was initially scheduled to
provide testimony on the second day of
the trial, but that was cancelled, leaving
Yuyee the only person to give evidence in
her defence.
In the court documents, the amount of
cocaine Yuyee was allegedly caught with
jumped from 5mg to 251mg. Police
claimed they did not have a machine at
the airport or police station to properly
weigh the drugs at the time of arrest. One
of the prosecution witnesses, a police
officer, told the court that Yuyee herself
had come up with the 5mg figure.
A week after Yuyee went to jail, her lawyer
resigned, saying he was scared and did
not want to have more problems. The
second lawyer they hired also resigned,
saying the case was “very complicated”. THE SENTENCE
On June 12 last year Yuyee was sentenced
to 15 years in prison and slapped with a
1.5-million-baht fine for importing
251mg of cocaine. She was sentenced to
an additional three months for the case
related to possession of wildlife.
As soon as the judge read the sentence,
Yuyee was handcuffed and sent to jail.
“Our whole life was completely smashed,”
said Mr Ramos. “Fourteen years together
trying to buy a house and take care of the
family … so much hard work and
suddenly, just because of some corrupted
system, everything was smashed.”
The 251mg figure was the result of a drug
test conducted by the Department of
Medical Sciences’ Bureau of Drugs and
Narcotics on Nov 14, 2012, according to
official documents seen by Spectrum. A
month later, the results were delivered to
Don Muang police. Yuyee’s charge was
upgraded from possession to importation.
The actual cocaine was never presented
as evidence in court.
The judge dismissed the significant
disparity in the weight of the drug,
arguing that government officials handling
the case had no motivation to wrongly
prosecute the defendant.
Chaiwat Detpathum, a lawyer specialising
in drug crimes, said the 15-year sentence
was considered low for a case involving
the import of narcotics.
Cocaine is classified as a category II drug
under the 1979 Narcotics Act, meaning
anyone who produces, imports or exports
it faces jail time of 20 years to life, and a
fine of two to five million baht.
Yuyee’s term was reduced by a quarter of
the original sentence of 20 years due to
mitigating circumstances.
“The penalty related to the import of
drugs does not take into account the
amount,” said Mr Chaiwat.
Yuyee’s current lawyer, who preferred not
to be named, said he lodged an appeal
against his client’s conviction last year and
is hoping to bring up inconsistencies in
the weight of the recovered cocaine as
one of the main arguments.
Mr Ramos has already applied for bail six
times, offering up to three million baht in
surety, while the appeal is heard, arguing
that the welfare of Yuyee’s three children
was at stake. But all requests, including
two instances when the couple’s eight-
year-old son had to undergo heart
surgery, have been denied.
Yuyee’s lawyer said it would be unlikely
that the court will approve further
requests for bail.....‘SHE LOOKS LIKE SH*T’
Mr Ramos takes the children to visit their
mother at the Central Women’s
Correctional Institution every Friday,
although they are not allowed any
physical contact. She shares a 45m² cell
with 70 inmates.
A picture of Yuyee taken two weeks ago
and seen by Spectrum shows her wearing
a badge on her prison uniform with
details of her conviction. It lists her
offence as being caught with 5mg of
cocaine.
“She looks like sh*t,” said Mr Ramos. “She
is stressed to the point of ‘I’m gonna kill
myself’. She will kill herself one day.”
Mr Ramos believes Yuyee’s past history of
drug use had been used as a convenient
factor for authorities to press charges
against her, although he claims she has
been clean of drugs for the past 13 years.
Since then, she has undergone
rehabilitation, attending Alcoholics
Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous
meetings.
“I’m not saying that Yuyee was a saint in
the past,” said Mr Ramos. “But I can
assure 100% she didn’t consume cocaine
at the time of her detention.”
On June 12, Yuyee marked exactly one
year since her incarceration. Spectrum
tried to visit her as a friend, but was told
to wait one month for approval.
“The Thai way is that you shut up, listen
and wait. But it’s one year, and my kids
have to be with their mother,” Mr Ramos
said. “This is not justice. This is
corruption; trying to cover up police
mistakes.
“After six petitions denied and seeing that
somebody with a lot of power wanting her
inside, it [talking to the media] is the only
alternative at the moment, even if it costs
me a bullet in my head.”
Sarit, Yuyee’s eldest son, quit playing
football at school after receiving taunts
from his peers. “Don’t fight with him, his
mother sells drugs,” he heard at a school
football match.
He reads everything he can find on the
internet related to his mother’s case.
“If they cannot prove that the drugs were
at the airport, why is she in jail?” the 11-
year-old once asked his dad. “Papa,
normally if you take sugar and you
analyse sugar, a part of what you analyse
is lost. But in the case of mama, it is
exactly 50 times plus one milligramme
more.”
The question from Sahapol, the couple’s
eight-year-old son, was more
straightforward: “Papa, who is going to
help you? If the police are the bad
people, to whom can we go to?”............LOSING HOPE
Yuyee’s case has gained increasing
international attention, with big-name
stars such as Shakira, singer-songwriter
Alejandro Sanz, tennis player Rafael Nadal
and soccer player Leonel Messi retweeting
the #freeyuyee hashtag.
Freeyuyee gained the status of a “trending
topic” on Twitter on three to four
occasions;
the latest was on Yuyee’s one-year
anniversary in jail.
Two months ago, Mr Ramos started a
campaign on Change.org to collect
500,000 signatures to petition the Thai
government to review Yuyee’s case. The
campaign has received overwhelming
support from Spaniards and now has
more than 357,700 signatories.
“At the moment, Spain can’t do anything
because of the European community,”
said Mr Ramos. “Europe has no official
contact [with the Thai government] until
there is democracy again.”
Mr Ramos was well known worldwide as a
tennis coach before he started hosting a
TV show on the Discovery Channel five
years ago. His programme, Wild Frank, is
aired in 24 countries including Thailand,
and Mr Ramos is known as “Frank of the
jungle” in Spanish.
Because of his work, Mr Ramos travels out
of the country on alternate months,
leaving the three children at home with
their maid.
At a Starbucks branch on Sukhumvit
Road, he brings along a stack of
documents, a laptop and a blue and
yellow Sesame Street children’s backpack
only slightly taller than an iPhone.
He showed Spectrum a video of the day
he and Yuyee rescued the leopard in
2012. As she got in a car after
transferring the leopard from the cage at
the captor’s house to a blue basket, the
exact same Sesame Street bag was slung
over Yuyee’s shoulder.
“This one,” Mr Ramos said, turning the
bag so that Big Bird is facing the front,
“was when we first had our twins. We put
diapers and things in it for the kids; she
carries one and I carry another.”
Sarit’s twin brother died 11 years ago.
“That way, we remember,” he said. “I
know it’s silly. But unfortunately she can’t
have it [the bag] now.”
Mr Ramos visits Yuyee several times per
week, where she mostly cries when he
mentions the children. One time, a
psychologist talked to her and told her to
accept her crime and her damage to
society.
“This is going to grow to the point that
something will happen to me, or Yuyee in
jail,” said Mr Ramos. “The next thing that
can happen is they shoot me in the head.
And everything for what? For money, for
a leopard, for pride.”