British women suspected of smuggling £1.5m of cocaine out of South America told they will spend up to THREE years in Peru's worst jail BEFORE they face trial...

Michaella McCollum Connolly is led away from the Palacio de la Justicia, in Lima, after she was told she will spend up to the next three years at the notorious Fatima de Virgen...


Hello Friends!

The two British women accused of acting as drug mules in return for a holiday in Peru have been moved to a notoriously tough jail to await trial.

Melissa Reid, from Glasgow, and Michaella McCollum Connolly, from Northern Ireland, face spending up to three years in Lima’s Virgen de Fatima prison after bail was refused.

Flanked by ten armed guards, the 20-year-olds looked exhausted and overwhelmed as they were led in handcuffs from a court jail to the overcrowded women’s prison, where poorer inmates are reportedly forced to prostitute themselves in return for food.

Escorted: Melissa Reid is taken away from the Palacio de la Justicia after being told she will spend up to the next three years at the Fatima de Virgen prison...

Prosecutor Juan Rojas had told the judge during their court appearance that the pair ‘knowingly and voluntarily’ agreed to act as drug mules after accepting an all-expenses- paid holiday to Peru from three strangers.

On July 20, a British man called Jake introduced Melissa and Michaella to three men, Julio, Christian and Enrique, while they were in Ibiza, Mr Rojas said.
The three paid for air fares to Peru, hotels and tours, and gave them cash. The women flew separately to Lima.


Enrique delivered packages of cocaine worth £1.5million to them in the capital on August 5. The following day the drugs were found in the women’s suitcases as they tried to check in for a flight from Lima to Madrid.

There was ‘insufficient evidence’ to support their claim they were abducted by gun-toting Colombian gangsters in Ibiza who threatened them and their families if they did not do as they were told, Mr Rojas said.

The women had ‘every opportunity’ to ask for help and even posed for photographs with police officers, he said. If convicted they face between eight and 15 years in jail.

Worried: The pair looked glum and drawn as they were led away in handcuffs through the back of the court to a holding cell...

An officer from anti-drugs squads Dirandro, speaking in pigeon English, asked Melissa in a video released by police: 'Your know to contain this bag.'
 

Melissa replied: 'I was forced to take these bags in my luggage.'
Asked again: 'You know they contained drugs', she replied: 'I did not know that.'
McCollum, from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, in Northern Ireland, and Reid, from Glasgow claim they were forced to carry the drugs - concealed in food packages - by an armed gang who threatened their family members. 

Yesterday they appeared before a judge for the first time and were asked why they had posed with a Peruvian police officer in a photograph – and not asked him for help – if they had been kidnapped.

Peru’s penal authority says 1,648 foreigners are currently in its prisons on drug trafficking charges, 31 of them British citizens.

They looked tired and daunted as they sat side-by-side, in handcuffs, next to their solicitor Meyer Fishman at the superior court in Callao yesterday...

Culled from The Daily Mail UK...

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Simply Cheska...