Two British women plead guilty to £1.5m cocaine smuggling charges in Peru

Michaella McCollum, 20, from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, and Melissa Reid, 20, from Glasgow, gave behind-closed-doors pleas when they appeared before a judge in the port town of Callao, near the capital Lima yesterday.

The pair took full responsibility for drug trafficking after initially claiming they were forced to carry 24lbs of cocaine in food packets hidden inside their luggage. They were arrested as they checked in to board a flight from Lima to Spain. last month.

A spokesman for the court in Callao said: “They will automatically have a sixth off from the minimum jail sentence of eight years and will be sentenced to six years and eight months in prison.

“Sentencing will take place on October 1 at a new hearing.”

Reid’s family has previously said that they are working with the Foreign Office in the hope of persuading the Peruvian authorities to allow her to serve part of her sentence in the UK.

Speaking outside the court in Lima, lawyer Meyer Fishman said he could not comment until the young women were sentenced.

Both women, who had been working on the Spanish party island of Ibiza this summer, had previously claimed they were coerced into carrying the drugs by Colombian drug lords who kidnapped them at gunpoint and forced them to travel to Majorca and then on to Peru. They said their families had been threatened if they did not comply.

If they had chosen to go to a trial, they would have faced a wait of up to three years for their case to be heard and a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted.

So far they have been held at the notorious Virgen de Fatima prison in Lima, but court officials said they may now be transferred to the equally tough Santa Monica women’s jail.

Their guilty pleas came on the same day that the UN declared that Peru has now overtaken Colombia as the world’s number one producer of coca leaf, used to make cocaine.

According to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, coca plantations in Peru covered 60,400 hectares last year.