Tamara Martins, a 31-year-old model booker from Croydon, is being held in a Cambodian prison after authorities discovered 34kg of cannabis in her luggage as she attempted to leave the country. She now faces a potential 20-year sentence under Cambodia's strict drug laws.
Claims of being set up
Martins maintains she was framed by a man who approached her at a bar and offered her a fee to transport a suitcase of electronics to the UK. She stated she only became aware of the drugs when stopped by officials at Techo Airport.
Her brother, Trey, told the Daily Mail: “She's never been arrested for anything to do with drugs and she's never been involved in that sort of stuff.”
Conditions in prison
In a letter to her brother, Martins described her ordeal: “It's hell in here. I haven't been able to sleep, eat or anything. I have to try and not think so much about life at home otherwise I'll die from a broken heart... It's really difficult and hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
She says she shares a cell with 60 others and is forced to sleep on the hard floor. Martins is the mother of a 10-year-old daughter, who has not yet been told about her mother's arrest.
Family's response and legal fight
Trey said: “She doesn't know that her mum has been arrested. She's calm. I've told her, ‘your mum is all right. She's good. Don't worry about it. She's doing the best she can’.”
On a now-deleted GoFundMe page, Trey wrote: “Everything has happened incredibly quickly. As a family, we are doing everything we possibly can from here, contacting the British authorities, trying to arrange welfare support and desperately trying to secure proper legal representation for her in Cambodia. The reality is that we cannot do this alone. Legal representation and the costs involved in supporting Tamara from another country are more than our family can manage by ourselves. We are raising money so that she can have a lawyer there to protect her rights, understand exactly what is happening to her and make sure she is not facing this situation completely alone.”
Broader trend of arrests abroad
According to the Foreign Office, drug-smuggling arrests involving Britons abroad have more than quadrupled between 2023 and 2025. Cambodia's zero-tolerance drug policy includes life sentences for drug trafficking, underscoring the severity of Martins's situation as her family works to secure legal representation and support from UK authorities.
