The day I decided to become a cocaine smuggler... and how I thought Peru was in Spain, by drugs mule Michaella
DRUG smuggler Michaella McCollum has admitted she thought Peru was in Spain when she agreed to become a cocaine mule for a dealer in Ibiza.
The Dungannon woman and Melissa Reid from Scotland were dubbed the ‘Peru Two’ after they were caught trying to smuggle 11kg of cocaine worth £1.5m out of the South American country’s capital Lima in August 2013.
The pair were sentenced to six years and eight months in prison but were released in 2016.
Michaella said she had originally travelled to Ibiza to escape her hometown, to get away from a “complicated relationship” with her absent father, to escape an abusive boyfriend, and to get away from the “unrest and violence” in Northern Ireland.
In an extract from her book, You’ll Never See Daylight Again, published in the Mail on Sunday, Michaella said she had originally agreed to pick up a package of drugs in Barcelona for a drug dealer called Davey before the plan was later changed.
“On August 1, 2013, my fate was sealed,” she said. “That was the day I was introduced to an associate of Davey’s called Mateo, a tall, skinny guy from Colombia. ‘There’s been a change of plan,’ Mateo told me. ‘You’re not going to Barcelona any more. You’re going to Peru.’
“People will have their own opinions of me for everything that’s happened, and what I’m going to admit now is only going to give them more fuel. But the sorry truth is I had no idea where Peru was. No clue. I thought it was another Spanish town.”
She was then told that, as a first-time smuggler, she would travel with another woman, Melissa Reid. Mateo told her she would collect the drugs in Lima and that officials in Peru customs had been bribed so the drugs would not be discovered.
She was told she would be paid £5,000. She flew out on August 5 to Lima where she met Melissa, who she described as “annoying”. They visited tourist spots for a couple of days as part of their cover, then got a call to pick up the drugs and they tried to fly out with them the next day.
Michaella described the heart-stopping moment her case full of cocaine went past a drugs detection dog and an armed guard in the airport. “It passed them both and headed towards the gap in the wall. Somehow, miraculously, we had got away with it. Then I realised Melissa was no longer standing next to me. She was being led by the arm into a room behind the check-in desk. Her bags were being carried there too.
“Behind her were six men wielding semi-automatic weapons... The game was up.”
Michaella was taken to Ancon maximum-security prison.
She described the moment a Brazilian woman called Danielle attempted to attack her with a kitchen knife after turning the channel on the TV in the jail.
Michaella admitted her guilt but said she only “sort of ” knew what she was doing, adding that she was “hung out to dry” by a bunch of gangsters and the Peruvian justice system.