South African woman, jailed in Thailand, gets to speak to mother

A young South African woman, 23 year old Ashley Oosthuizen, sentenced to life in a Thai prison has finally been able to speak to her mother after nearly 3 months of Covid ‘quarantine’ (as there was an outbreak in the prison). She was sentenced after being accused and convicted by a Thai court of accepting a package of MDMA at the Koh Samui restaurant ‘Hot in the Biscuit’ in late-2020.

Ashley had worked as a kindegarden teacher on Koh Samui, and was known as a friendly face on the island. She was later laid off, and it was difficult to find a full-time job offering a work permit. She met her then-boyfriend, American expat Tristan Nettles, when he offered her a job as a manager at a new breakfast and brunch restaurant, which would secure her with a valid work permit.

Tristan is a self-confessed “international dark web drug dealer”, who used Bitcoin to make the sales and…