The jailing of an Australian grandmother in Japan is “really distressing” for her family, the federal government has acknowledged as it committed to doing all it could to help her.

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler made the promise on Friday, a day after Donna Nelson, 58, from Perth, was sentenced to six years for smuggling methamphetamine into Tokyo in January 2023.

Her legal team has indicated it plans to appeal, noting that the two years Nelson has already served will count toward her overall sentence.

Japanese officials uncovered about two kilograms of methamphetamine in a false bottom in a suitcase Nelson was carrying as checked luggage and the court accepted her testimony that she was tricked as part of an online romance scam.

Nelson told the court she was carrying the case for a man she met online in 2020, who said he was the Nigerian owner of a fashion business, but she did not know that drugs were hidden inside it.

She was supposed to meet him in Japan but he did not turn up, prosecutors said. The court found he paid for her travel to Japan and asked her to collect dress samples from an acquaintance during a stopover in Laos.

She was ordered to pay a fine equivalent to $A10,000 on top of her sentence, after being found guilty in the Chiba District Court of breaking drug and customs laws.

Butler said the Australian government would continue to provide support to the 58-year-old Indigenous woman and her family as they decided on their next steps.

“This will obviously be a really distressing result for Ms Nelson and for her family and friends,” he told the ABC on Thursday.

“Our government, through the usual consular pathways, has been providing support to Ms Nelson and the usual sort of consular assistance that you’d expect in a case like this.”

Nelson’s family members, some of whom were at the trial, said they were disappointed and devastated by the verdict.

They maintain she was duped and have described her as the victim of a crime, not a criminal.

“We will never stop fighting for our mum,” her family said.

“And we will keep fighting until we can bring her home.”

-AAP