The district court of Monthey in Valais sentenced a 54-year-old Portuguese woman to three years in prison for drug trafficking, a rare prison term for a woman in the canton’s drug cases.[1] Two of the three years are suspended over a four-year probation period, leaving one year to serve, reduced by the slightly more than 10 months she had already spent in pre-trial detention, and she was also banished from Switzerland for five years.[1]

At her trial on 27 October she accepted the public prosecutor’s offer to settle the case through a simplified procedure.[1] Between January and December 2025 she sold 870 grams of cocaine for a profit of 42,550 Swiss francs.[1] In the same period the woman from the Chablais region sold between 100 and 200 grams of hashish and 300 grams of marijuana, earning a total of 2,000 Swiss francs.[1] She sold the cocaine to about twenty users and the prosecution said the drug sales financed her own consumption and other personal needs.[2] She was arrested and taken into custody on 17 December 2025, and the hashish and marijuana were sold up to that point.[2] The prosecutor, Emmanuelle Raboud, argued that the accused knew she was endangering or could endanger a large number of people, and the court tried her for a felony, a misdemeanour and a contravention under the federal narcotics law.[2] She had also consumed the banned products herself, which brought the contravention charge under the federal narcotics law.[2] By accepting the simplified procedure she gave up any possible appeal.[2]

According to a cantonal police statistic, about 10% of the drug-trafficking cases broken up in Valais involve women.[1]