BRITISH TEENAGER GETS REDUCED SENTENCE FOR DRUG SMUGGLING

MOSCOW (AP) A Russian judge upheld the drug smuggling conviction of a
British teenager Tuesday, but reduced her sixyear prison term and said
she will be freed Jan. 6.

Karen Henderson, 19, who got a retrial Monday after months of delays, wept
as the judge reduced her term to 1 year and 11 months.

Before the verdict, Henderson once again proclaimed her innocence, and said
the prosecution had never presented any evidence of her guilt.

``I never carried any narcotics,'' she said in a statement read from a
barred cage inside the courtroom. ``I am innocent.''

Henderson was arrested in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in February 1996
along with a Dutch woman and charged with hiding cocaine inside a
falsebottomed suitcase.

Henderson claimed the drugs were planted. The Dutch woman, Suzanne Gerarda
Vorstenbosch, pleaded guilty and was also sentenced to six years.

Henderson has maintained that she is an innocent victim of the Russian
justice system in a trial where prosecutors did not produce either the
cocaine or the suitcase as evidence.

Henderson was found guilty of drug smuggling in October and sentenced to
six years in prison. She was granted a retrial because of poor translation
during the first trial.