PORTLAND (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says a retired Maine pastor has been released from a Spanish prison after falling victim to an international drug smuggling scam.
Collins says 77-year-old Joseph Martin from Dresden, Maine, has been reunited with his family in the United States.
Martin had been in a Spanish prison since July 2015, serving a six-year sentence. Spanish customs and border agents found him with more than 3 pounds of cocaine. The drugs were hidden in documents that Martin agreed to pick up in South America and was trying to deliver to a woman he had fallen in love with online.
Collins and eight other lawmakers wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry to work with foreign government to re-examine the cases of incarcerated victims.
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