Samantha Ziegler, back in her hometown of Nice after serving two years and eight months in an Argentine prison for drug trafficking (which she denies), described to the French media about the ‘hell' she went through in Ezeiza (Greater Buenos Aires).

"It was not a nightmare. A nightmare lasts for one night. You wake up, you take a shower and you're out of it. Hell is two years and eight months. You take a shower and you're still in prison," she told reporters in her lawyer's office in France.

The young woman, who is now 21 years old, was arrested in March 2007 at the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires along a friend. Airport authorities found jeans in their luggage which were impregnated with a total of 14 kilos of cocaine. Sentenced to five years in prison, she was released on Monday, after serving less than three years. Her friend remains under arrest.

Samantha Ziegler described life in prison to French media: "80% of the people in there had been arrested for robbery. You had to sleep with your shoes on and with your valuables so they would not get stolen. Some women were violent. Some used razorblades to fight. They were very jealous because I was coming from a developed country. They were fights between the Argentines and foreigners — people like me — but also from the neighbouring countries, like Bolivia or Paraguay."

"We were between 20 and 30 in a cell. It was full of cockroaches. I paid for something I didn't do and I had the worst Embassy in Argentina. They came to see me only once," she added.

Samantha pleaded guilty at the time, after he lawyer told her she would serve less time in prison if she did so. But she continues to claim she did not know the jeans were in the luggage. "Someone must have put them there," she says.