Greek model Eirini Melissaropoulou, aged 21, was acquitted by the High Court of Hong Kong after being held for 16 months on charges of trying to smuggle 2.6 kilos of cocaine into the country.
The model had been arrested in 2017 for drug smuggling, but on Wednesday she was unanimously acquitted and allowed to catch a flight back to Greece.
The young model said that she was not aware that there was a hidden pocket sewn into her backpack carrying the cocaine. She court heard that she had been framed by a Romanian friend with whom she had travelled to Hong Kong via Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. The fact that her fingerprints were not found in the pocket surrounding the area on her backpack where the drugs had been hidden was the one piece of evidence that help prove her innocence.
She had previously passed through two airport security systems carrying the same backpack, however had been stopped at the third entrance in Hong Kong.