A Dublin mother last night made an emotional plea for authorities to bring home her pregnant daughter who could face the death penalty in Laos.

Samantha Orobator’s heartbroken mother Jane wept as she appealed to have her four daughters reunited.

The 20-year-old Briton faces death by firing squad if convicted of drug smuggling. Her trial starts today.

“I’m so scared,” said Mrs Orobator from her home. “I’m just appealing to the British Government, to the Laos authorities, to just please release her. They should just being her back to me. Please.

“I just want them to bring her back to me,” she sobbed.

Mrs Orobator said she has no idea why her daughter was in Laos last summer and didn’t believe it when she heard of her arrest around late September.

She said the case is totally out of character for Samantha, who she described as a quiet, shy, small build girl who looks like a young teenager.

Mrs Orobator said she is absolutely devastated the trial date was brought forward to this morning.

“I’m really terrified. I have been crying my eyes out,” she continued. “One thing I am praying for is that the lawyer sent by Reprieve, if she will be able to help her.”

Clutching a picture of her daughter as a teenager, tears rolled down Mrs Orobator’s face as she said conditions in the notorious Phonthong prison, where Samantha is being held, are appalling.

“I just don’t want to imagine how she is surviving in there. It’s not even fit for animals.

“To suddenly become pregnant in a prison supposedly for women, something bad actually happened there,” she added.

Mrs Orobator last heard from her daughter in July when she was on holiday in Holland with friends.

“Our plan was that she would then come here on her holidays so we were all waiting for her, only to hear she is somewhere between Bangkok and Cambodia,” she said.

The 40-year-old, who is studying to be a psychiatric nurse at Trinity College Dublin, last saw her daughter at Christmas 2007.

She moved to Ireland from the UK without her daughter eight years ago, leaving her in England with an aunt. Mrs Orobator now lives in a housing estate near Dublin with her three other daughters. Her husband is in Nigeria.