A FORMER Blackburn woman was named as an international heroin trafficker who was facing the death penalty after a smuggler using her stolen passport was arrested in Pakistan.

Rebecca Neumark was reported to be one of five people detained at Karachi airport on Friday after hiding 2.7 kilos of the drug in a suitcase.

But while newspapers around the world announced that she faced the death penalty she was at home celebrating her 25th birthday and engagement to engineer Simon Prytherch.

Now the authorities are trying to discover the identity of the woman who was using her passport. Foreign Office officials believe she may be South African.

Rebecca's passport was stolen with her car keys when her handbag was taken from a bar in Kensington, London. The thief used her keys to steal her car, which was recovered in June.

Rebecca's 74-year-old grandmother Edith Neumark, of Whalley New Road, Blackburn, refused to comment today but was reported to have said she was frightened to death when told her granddaughter was in trouble.

She was quoted as saying: "I could not understand it because I knew she was with her fiancee Simon and her parents in North Wales - and she is such a lovely and delightful young lady who would never dream of getting involved with drugs.

"It took a little while to realise what had happened - that someone had been going round the world using her stolen passport and posing as her. It is a terrible thing that someone can take over another person's identity like that."

Miss Neumark, an interior designer who was born in Blackburn, is the great niece of plastics manufacturer Keith Newmark, of Sabden, who said he was unaware of the incident. Her aunt and uncle, Geoff and Anne Neumark, of Langho, were on holiday today.

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