Two teenage British girls sentenced in January by a Ghana court to one year in prison for smuggling cocaine will serve the full 12 months of their sentence and should be released July 17, a lawyer told AFP today.The sentence included time already served and a British diplomat said at the time of the sentencing the two girls, now aged 17, were likely to be released April 18 as they would qualify for a three-month reduction."The defence lawyer told us that once the girls were sentenced to one year, it would mean nine months as a three-month remission would routinely be allowed provided there was good behaviour," said Sabine Zanker, a lawyer with Fair Trials Abroad, the Britain-based body that provided legal representation for the girls."Until two or three weeks before April 18 it was his understanding they would be released" on that date, she told AFP by telephone from London."But the prison authorities said the reduction would not be applicable to juveniles. The rationale behind this is that the idea of rehabilitation is more important than punishment," Zanker continued.Yasemin Vatansever and Yatunde Diya are being held in a correctional home for girls in Accra.The two were stopped with 300,000 pounds worth of cocaine on July 2 last year, during a joint Ghanaian-British narcotics operation, British officials have said.They had entered the country in late June and been due to board a British Airways flight back to London when they were arrested.
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