A pensioner locked up for smuggling £1 million of cocaine onto a cruise ship has died alone in a Portuguese jail.

Susan Clarke, 72, lost her battle with breast cancer while serving time in Lisbon's notorious EP Tires.

She was allowed to visit husband Roger, 73, in the final weeks of her life but the pair had to communicate through a perspex screen, reports The Mirror.

A source told the paper Susan had been due to fly back to England to finish her sentence, adding: “She was handed a life sentence – left to die in a foreign prison with no loved ones around her."

The Chatham couple were arrested after a tip-off as the Marco Polo headed into Lisbon from the Caribbean in December 2018.

Police found 20lb of cocaine in the linings of four suitcases and they were sentenced to eight years in September 2019 and sent to separate maximum security prisons.

Prosecutors had claimed it was just one of four trips in two years, which each netted the mules £26,500, but the couple insisted they were conned by local criminals.

Susan, a former secretary, spent her final days in a 10ft by 10ft cell with three other inmates.

After finding a lump in her throat last year Susan told the Sunday People: "I may never get out of here alive and there's no way I can reduce my sentence now."

The grandmother-of-eight, who also has one great-grandchild, said the worst torture was being apart from Roger.

She had her appeal against conviction rejected last year.

In 2010 couple were caught in Norway while trying to smuggle 240 kilos of cannabis into Oslo.

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