GERMAN jetsetter Snjezana Stein her younger Tunisian-born lover Sami Trabelsi embraced and kissed in a court dock on Friday as they faced up to 25 years for smuggling cocaine.

The couple, who have seen almost nothing of each other since their arrest at Sydney airport in Easter last year, took the opportunity for a swift courtroom cuddle.

Stein wept and the lovers were then led separately down to the cells below Sydney’s Downing Centre court complex to be taken back to their separate prisons in western Sydney.

Stein, incarcerated in Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre following her arrest, looked drawn and visibly upset as a German interpreter told her she would have to wait a further three months to learn her fate.

Stein, 50, and Trabelsi, 38, were both due to be sentenced in the Sydney District Court on Friday for importing a marketable quantity of cocaine.

Police originally charged the couple with importing a commercial quantity of 4kg of the drug, but have since been each charged with smuggling the amount contained in their respective suitcases.

Stein’s lawyer told the court the amount was “820 grams of pure cocaine”, which was below the “commercial threshold” of 2kg, but still carried a maximum sentence of 25 years.

Stein wept as her lawyer, who refused to speak with news.com.au, told the court the German national was ready to proceed to sentencing after “almost 14 months in custody”.

“The situation for a remand prisoner is very different than for a sentenced prisoner.”

The couple has pleaded guilty to each secreting the drug in the lining of the suitcases they brought into Sydney Airport on a “holiday” to Australia last year.

Formerly blonde Stein, wore a plain cream-coloured shirt and grey jacket, her dark hair scraped back into a ponytail.

She sat blinking behind her spectacles in the front of the dock, smiling as Trabelsi was brought in and touching him on the arm.

Trabelsi, who was originally being held in Parklea Correctional Centre, wore a black leather jacket, had a full beard and glasses and sat beside an Arabic interpreter.

The couple, who on social media accounts feature in photographs accompanied by love heart emojis, appear to have known each other for some time and travelled together before flying to Australia last year.

In one photograph on the Facebook account of Stein’s adult son, he appears in a photograph alongside the couple with Trabelsi’s arm around him which he captioned “Family”.

Asked by District Court judge Mark Buscombe if any friends or relatives from overseas were present, Stein’s lawyer said no but she had a letter from a member of Stein’s family.

Stein and Trabelsi embarked on a 20-hour flight on April 14, 2017 from Dusseldorf, where the Croatian-born technical officer had been living.

Arriving at Sydney airport on the evening of Easter Saturday, the pair was selected by customs officers for baggage examination.

Officers “found anomalies” in the suitcase linings and powder wrapped in plastic which later tested positive for cocaine.

Sydney solicitor Pawel Kulisiewicz asked for the sentencing to be adjourned on the grounds that Legal Aid NSW had only just handed over Trabelsi’s file.

Judge Luscombe adjourned the part-heard sentencing until August for the two offenders, who are both German nationals.

“It’s regrettable,” he told the court, “people on remand have very little opportunity to do rehabilitation programs until they are sentenced.”