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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Stuart Macdonald

Heavily pregnant Scots mum jailed in Tenerife over 'unpaid fine' returns home

A pregnant woman who feared having to give birth in a Spanish prison after being jailed for failing to pay a fine has returned home to Scotland.

Jamielee Fielding, 32, previously travelled home to Livingston, West Lothian, without paying a £360 fine over a drunken altercation in Malaga in 2021. But when she went on holiday to Tenerife in August she was arrested and sentenced to four months in prison.

Her local MP Hannah Bardell travelled to the Canary Islands two weeks ago and helped secure her safe return home. The SNP MP for Livingston has spoken of her relief that Spanish police "saw sense" over the arrest.

Ms Bardell said: "I travelled along with her dad, at my own cost, to support my constituent Jamielee and to ensure a smooth and safe passage home from Tenerife. It's been a difficult and upsetting time for her since she lost her mum last year, now I hope she can look to the future.

"Wishing her and her family all the very best and hope her baby arrives safely in the coming weeks. I'm grateful to the staff at the Foreign Office who my team and I worked closely with to help ensure safe passage.

"I'm glad the Spanish authorities finally saw sense and I hope that some lessons will be learned about fair and proper treatment of foreign nationals in Spain."

Jamielee was freed with the help of Livingston MP Hannah Bardell (Daily Record)

Jamielee, who is eight months pregnant, was fined after an altercation in Spain a year ago. At the time she had been collecting her mum's body after she died in an unexplained incident on holiday.

She said she had "not been in the right frame of mind" and ended up being arrested for drunken behaviour on the beach. The mum-to-be said she intended to pay the fine when she arrived in Tenerife but was not allowed to and was sent to prison instead.

She spent the first six weeks of her sentence in the maximum security jail which she described as "a living hell". Speaking last month, she said: "It's been unimaginable. I can't contemplate having my baby here in a foreign hospital.

"All I want is to be back home in a Scottish hospital with my family around me to have a safe birth and make sure she is healthy. I'm looking for a miracle because right now it doesn't look like there's any way I can get back."

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