Pregnant Briton Samantha Orobator faces execution

A last-ditch attempt was being made today by British diplomats and legal campaigners to save a four-month pregnant British woman who faces death by firing squad in Laos if she is convicted of smuggling heroin.

She is Samantha Orobator, 20, from south London, who has been held for nine months in the notorious Phonthong jail in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, apparently without any access to a lawyer.

Nigerian-born Orobator was arrested last August at Vientiane's Wattay Airport where she was allegedly caught with 680g of heroin. Smuggling anything more than 500g carries a mandatory death sentence in Laos. She is now due in court, either today or tomorrow, for what the renowned human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith describes as a "show trial".

It appears that the Laotian authorities have done everything they can to prevent Orobator getting proper legal representation. They failed to inform Britain of her arrest in August last year - thus breaching an international consular agreement - claiming they did not have access to a fax machine.

A lawyer has questioned how Orobator could have become pregnant while in jail

The Foreign Office only discovered Orobator's fate by chance when Australian authorities found out from another inmate and passed the message along.

Now the legal charity Reprieve, founded by Stafford Smith, claims the authorities in Laos have brought forward her trial in a further effort to deny her representation. A lawyer from Reprieve, Anna Morris, who flew into Vientiane at the weekend, expecting the trial to begin on Tuesday, has apparently been told that court proceedings would begin today. Stafford Smith called it a "farce".

Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell said he would be raising the case with the Laotian deputy prime minister when they meet in London on Thursday. But Stafford Smith said: "That's not much good. The trial will be over by then."

He called on the Government to do everything in its power to have the trial put back. He also questioned how Orobator could have become pregnant while in jail.

A friend of Orobator's, 21-year-old Ronke Oseni, who says she only found out about her situation last week, said: "The punishment does not fit the crime. They want to shoot her but what about the baby?"