Donna Nelson has returned to Perth after almost four years in Japan, where she was jailed after being duped by a Nigerian man she met online into carrying nearly two kilograms of methamphetamine.
The Perth grandmother was secretly taken from Japan’s largest women’s prison in Tochigi early yesterday before boarding a flight home. She arrived in Western Australia last night and was later taken to a Perth prison to serve the remainder of her six-year sentence.
“It doesn’t look like Perth. The airport’s different – it’s a different place,” Nelson told her daughters after landing.
Nelson, a former federal Greens candidate and mother of five, was arrested at Narita Airport near Tokyo in January 2023. The methamphetamine had been concealed in a false bottom of a suitcase she had been asked to take to Japan.
She had been planning to marry a man known to her as “Kelly” after meeting him through an online dating site. The pair communicated for more than two years, but Nelson never met him in person.
Nelson travelled business class from Perth to Singapore and then Laos, where she was allegedly asked to collect the suitcase. The court heard there was no hotel booking in her name when she arrived, and that she received the luggage from Kelly’s “business manager” only 15 minutes before checking in for her flight to Japan.
She told the Chiba District Court that the case contained clothing samples and that she did not notice anything unusual before placing her belongings inside it.
“At no point did I feel like Kelly was scamming me,” Nelson testified.
In December 2024, Nelson was convicted in the Chiba District Court and sentenced to six years in prison, along with a 10,000-dollar fine for drug trafficking. A total of 430 days was deducted for time already served.
A subsequent appeal against her conviction failed when the Tokyo High Court found that Nelson had put aside her concerns and complied with her lover’s request to transport the suitcase for his fashion design business.
The Japanese judge acknowledged that Nelson had been taken advantage of. Her lawyer, Rie Nishida, had described the verdict as unreasonable and said they would continue fighting for her freedom.
After Nelson declined to appeal her sentence, her family pursued an international prisoner transfer so she could complete her sentence in Australia. The process required the support and co-operation of both governments.
Her daughter Ashlee Charles said the family was relieved to have her home.
“We appreciate the support from the Australian Government, the Japanese Government and friends, family and the wider community throughout this whole ordeal,” she said.
