For nearly two months, an Oregon woman says she has been in jail for merely witnessing a crime in the Southeast Asian country of East Timor.
KOIN first reported that Addison, 40, hired a driver in Indonesia on Sept. 5 to drive her across the border to East Timor to renew her visitor visa. There was another passenger in the car as well, who asked the the driver stop to pick up a package at the DHL office.
“Apparently the police had been waiting for someone to pick up this package because it contained illegal drugs and the police arrested my daughter,” said Addison's mother, Bernadette Kero in an interview with the television station last month.
Addison posted on Facebook that the package, in fact, contained 1.6 kilos of methamphetamine, and everyone in the car was arrested. She was released on Sept. 9, but had to stay in the country as a witness in the investigation. From a hostel, she reached out to media and did a number of interviews to get her story out.
Addison went to court on Oct. 29 for an update on her case, but learned that the prosecution had filed a petition for her immediate imprisonment with no explanation. Addison's attorney filed an urgent appeal to the court the same day.
Addison's case has caught the attention of the U.S. State Department, Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and José Ramos-Horta, Timor-Leste's Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country's former president.
"Senator Wyden's office has been in contact with the State Department and also with Dr. Addison's family as well, both monitoring the situation and checking things to see that we get this to a positive resolution, as soon as possible," said Hank Stern, spokesman for Wyden.
According to Kero's Help Stacey Facebook page, Addison was moved to a women's prison outside of Dili. She is currently undergoing an "induction period," which requires her to be isolated for five days before she'll be moved into a female unit.
"In my letter, I asked her 'How are you doing, REALLY?' and her response was pure Stacey, 'I am ok, not good,' but doing better since I had a visitor," Kero writes. "She told me how difficult it was to be all alone in a small cell with nothing to do but worry all day."
Addison studied veterinary medicine at the University of California Davis. She has been a veterinarian for more than 12 years, having most recently worked in Portland. She started her trip in Antarctica before traveling to Indonesia. Wednesday will be Addison's 41st birthday.
Copyright 2014 Oregon Public Broadcasting