POELMAN NOW SERVES SENTENCE AT HOME

Auckland: Disgraced Commonwealth Games athlete Simon Poelman has been
released early from prison.

The triple games medal winner was sentenced to five and a-half years'
jail in October, 1998, for importing nearly 2000 tablets of the
designer drug ecstasy.

But Poelman (37) has been released from Auckland's Paremoremo prison
and is serving the rest of his sentence on home detention at his
mother's North Shore home.

Sunday News reported Poelman was wearing an ankle bracelet which
activates an alarm if he leaves the property.

It said Poelman was released before Christmas.

His mother, Beth Poelman, said at the weekend her son just wanted to
get on with his life and neither she nor he were going to comment to
media.

Poelman is one of 174 New Zealanders on the home detention scheme.

Security checks are made on the home detainees any time of the day or night.

The former Olympian had been granted weekend leave late last year.

Poelman was arrested after posting a stuffed rabbit from Belgium to a
businessman friend in Auckland.

The toy was intercepted and found to contain the ecstasy, worth
$200,000 on the street.

Poelman denied any knowledge of the drugs and has maintained his innocence.