A 71-year old woman jailed for smuggling £1 million worth of cocaine onto a cruise ship fears she will die in prison.

Susan Clarke and her husband Roger, originally from Chatham, were sentenced to eight years in a Portuguese prison on drug smuggling charges.

The pensioners claimed they were conned into carrying the suitcases with drugs hidden in the lining by local criminals.

They have both been in separate maximum-security facilities since September.

Susan Clarke now fears she will die in the Lisbon prison after finding a lump in her left breast. She is awaiting the results from a double biopsy.

Speaking to the Sunday People, she described how her health had deteriorated.

She said: "I may never get out of here alive and there's no way I can reduce my sentence now.

"We were made an example of but I've been handed a death sentence. My worry is that I'll never be free and I'll be leaving here in a box."

The grandmother-of-eight, who also has one great-grandchild, said the worst torture was being apart from her husband who is serving his sentence in a different jail in Lisbon.

Clarke had her appeal against conviction rejected earlier this month.

According to the Sunday People, she wept as she described how the Foreign Office and Prime Minister Boris Johnson had ignored her pleas to return to the UK.

The couple were also arrested in Norway in 2010 as they tried to smuggle 240 kilos of cannabis into Oslo.

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