NICK Baker who was sentenced to 14 years in a Japanese prison will find out today if he can appeal against his sentence.

His mum Iris Baker, from Oaksey, near Malmesbury, will be waiting on tenterhooks this morning for a result from Mr Baker's second appeal hearing.

She said: "I am just praying for a miracle, but I have come up against so many brick walls since Nick was arrested that my hopes aren't high."

Mr Baker was sentenced a year ago after he was found with 41,120 ecstasy tablets in his bag.

He has always protested his innocence and Mrs Baker has been running a campaign for his release.

She said: "His lawyer will be given just one and a half hours to establish a case for appeal, and I have a horrible feeling that it will not be finished and Nick will have to wait even longer for the decision.

"The Japanese legal system is a joke. He has already had one hearing for the appeal, and that was only given one and a half hours as well, so he just has to wait longer and longer.

"And all this is just to determine whether he will be allowed to appeal."

If Mr Baker's appeal is denied he will have to pay a £27,000 fine within two weeks, or be forced to do 500 hours of hard labour in addition to his jail sentence.

Mrs Baker said: "I don't have that sort of money so we are trying to raise it through an appeal. So far we have got £7,000."

The appeal was given a boost this week when New Zealander Nic Holmes agreed to run the Blackpool marathon in aid of Mr Baker's fund.

Mrs Baker said: "Nic lives in Japan, and he was visiting someone else in the prison when he heard about my Nick and asked if he could go and visit him.

"Now he has been visiting him every week for about three months, and he calls me and tells me how Nick is doing.

"He is only allowed to visit for ten minutes at a time, but it gives Nick ten minutes out of his cage, and someone to talk to every week, and I am so grateful for that.

"He tells me that Nick has lost even more weight, his eyesight is now very blurred and he has constant back and joint pain from being forced to sit cross-legged in his concrete cell, but it is his mental health I am most worried about.

"He worries obsessively over everything I tell him from home and is so depressed."

University lecturer Mr Holmes was so moved by Mr Baker's plight that he is running the marathon to raise both money and awareness.

Mr Holmes will arrive in the UK from Japan tomorrow and run the marathon on Saturday.

He has already raised £1,000 before even arriving in the UK, and any sponsorship from Mr Baker's home town can be directed to irisbaker54@hotmail.com.

Mr Baker, a 33-year-old father-of-one, was travelling in advance of the World Cup in 2002 when he was arrested at Narita Airport in Tokyo after being found with 41,120 tablets of ecstasy and 990 grams of cocaine in his luggage.

He and his family maintain that he was duped into carrying the drugs by another passenger, but the courts dismissed their claims and sentenced him to 14 years.

In her efforts to free her son, Mrs Baker has contacted hundreds of victim support groups, and last month appeared on GMTV to talk about his plight.

She was joined by Stephen Jacobi of the campaign group Fair Trials Abroad, as part of the British Victim Support Week.

She has also set up the website www.justicefornickbaker.org to publicise his situation.