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Bernadette Kero, 64, of Klamath Falls, Oregon, said she last
spoke to her daughter, Dr. Stacey Addison, two nights earlier,
just after she was let out of prison in Dili, the capital of the
Southeast Asian country also known as Timor-Leste.
Addison, 41, a veterinarian from Portland, was visiting East
Timor as part of a round-the-world trip when she was detained in
early September on a drug charge.
After being held for five days, she was conditionally released
without her passport, then arrested again in late October when
she appeared in an East Timorese court to retrieve her passport
and was sent to prison, according to the U.S. State Department.
Following behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts to secure her
freedom, Addison was released on Christmas Day. She has been
staying since then as a guest at the home of former East
Timorese President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose
Ramos-Horta, her mother said.
Addison has insisted she was wrongly accused. According to an
account of her ordeal posted online by friends, she was first
taken into custody when police arrested a man who was sharing a
cab ride with her after he stopped to pick up a package of
illegal drugs.
When re-arrested nearly two months later, she was told the
prosecutor had appealed to have her conditional release from
jail rescinded, according to the account.
Her release from prison was announced by the State Department on
Thursday, and a department spokeswoman said on Friday she had
nothing more to add.
As of Friday, Kero said, her daughter was still waiting for the
East Timorese government to return her passport so she could
leave the country.
"I just want it over with," the mother told Reuters by
telephone.
"I'm very relieved that she's out of prison," Kero added,
calling her daughter's release a "fantastic Christmas present."
Addison was quoted by CNN on Thursday as telling reporters that
she planned to go home to Oregon as soon as she regained her
papers, or her mother would never forgive her.
To that, Kero said on Friday, "She better come straight home.
... I want to see her."
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis from Los Angeles; Writing by
Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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