Livingston mum-to-be Jamielee Fielding fears she will have to give birth in Spanish jail

A pregnant woman from Livingston fears her baby will have to be born in a Spanish prison after she was jailed for failing to pay a fine.
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Jamieliee Fileding, 32, was arrested when she arrived in Tenerife on August 19 after she flew in to join her father and brother for a family holiday. She had left Spain last year without paying a 420 euro fine for drunken behaviour in Malaga in 2021.

After being detained at passport control she was taken to a police station and then transferred to a prison. She offered to pay the fine but was told she would have to go to court. She has now been sentenced to four months in prison.

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Ms Fielding, who suffers from gestational diabetes, is worried for her own health and that of her baby. She says she can’t bear the thought of her daughter being born in jail.

She said: "She's due on 28 November and I've pretty much been told to prepare to have her here. I will need to have her here because there's no way of reducing the sentence. I'll need to complete the full four months which take me up to 16 December, so I need to be ready to have her here.”

She told the BBC: "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."

Her case has been raised in the House of Commons by Livingston SNP MP Hannah Bardell, who asked for a debate on the treatment of British citizens in Spanish prisons.

Jamielee Fielding has been sentenced to four months in prison.Jamielee Fielding has been sentenced to four months in prison.
Jamielee Fielding has been sentenced to four months in prison.
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She said: “My Livingston constituent Jamielee Fielding is nearly seven months pregnant and has gestational diabetes, but despite having paid the fine, the Spanish authorities in Tenerife are holding her, removing vital food and medication, and breaching her human rights. She has a very short window to get home to have her baby. Would the Leader of the House press the Foreign Secretary to help get Jamielee home, and to meet me so that I can do everything I can to make sure that she is safe, healthy and home as soon as possible?”

Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt told her: “I will certainly do that. I will raise it with the Foreign Office and urge it to be in touch with the honourable Lady.”

Ms Fielding originally incurred the £420 fine after she went to Malaga in September 2021 to identify her mother's body after she died while on holiday. She said she had not been in the “right frame of mind" and had been arrested for drunken behaviour on the beach.

In November last year, Ms Fielding spoke to the Evening News about her efforts to raise funds for a private investigator to look into what she believed were mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of her mum Sharon, 50, who ran the Gentleman Jack’s food stall in Edinburgh’s Princes Street for 10 years.

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She said she was first told her mother had fallen on the street and died from a head injury on the way to hospital, but the death certificate recorded pulmonary oedema – fluid in the lungs’ air sacs – as the cause of death. And when she went to identify her mother’s body the left side of her head was “all caved and dented in” and there was no explanation of why she had been walking at the side of a busy motorway.