I have to agree. If you go to a another country their laws are to be respected, just as we would expect them to respect ours.
Many years ago there was a movie, Midnight Express. It was based on a true story of an American student who went to Turkey and decided to smuggle out hashish. He had it taped to his body when caught. No way he could say it wasn't his. Because this was becoming an issue the Turkish courts sentenced him to prison. Turkish prison isn't the vacation spot even the worst US prisons are.
The entire tone of the movie was to make you feel sorry for the criminal. In fact, he eventually killed a guard and escaped. Now if someone did that here we would demand extradition. The US refused to extradite a murderer and convicted drug smuggler because some bleeding heart felt the punishment was too severe.
Personally, I think the Turkish have the right idea on punishing criminals. Perhaps if we had more severe punishment crime rates would drop. Nah, just because that works elsewhere it would never work here. After all, look how well our current system is doing.
Even more recently the US government bent over backwards to get a convicted drug smuggler released from a Russian prison. She should have done the entire 9 years.