I can’t back out, they will kill me...what drug mule Briton told friend
THE British girl held for drug smuggling in Peru reportedly sent a desperate message to a friend before her arrest, saying: ‘I can’t back out now, they will kill me.’
Melissa Reid claims she and Michaella McCollum Connolly, both 20, were kidnapped in Ibiza, threatened at gunpoint and forced to fly to Peru to act as drugs mules for a Colombian gang.
They were arrested at the airport in Lima, the Peruvian capital, with 11kg of the Class A drug, worth £1.5million.
Now, details have emerged that shed new light on Melissa’s extraordinary claims – and suggest she fell into the wrong crowd on the Spanish party island and was unable to refuse the demands of violent drugs lords.
Childhood friend Rebecca Hughes received a Facebook message from Melissa – with whom she travelled to Spain – a few days after she abruptly disappeared from the flat they shared at San Antonio Bay in Ibiza.
Miss Hughes, a former sales assistant, told Melissa’s father William Reid, 53: ‘She sent me a message saying, “I can’t back out now, they will kill me”.’ She did not want to dis- close her full conversation with Melissa but told him: ‘I was going to go to the police but Melissa asked me not to because she said it could endanger her and get her in trouble with the guys.’
Mr Reid, a gas company manager who flew to Peru last Wednesday, said the new information gave him fresh insight into how his ‘beautiful, intelligent’ daughter got caught up in a drugs cartel only a month after arriving in Ibiza, where she was working. ‘It sounds like she has been mixing with undesirables and one thing has led to another,’ he said.
Melissa, from Lenzie, Glasgow and Michaella, from Dungannon, Northern Ireland, claim the Colombian mafia threatened to harm them and their families if they went to the police or alerted airport staff.
A judge will decide today whether they should be charged. The women face up to 15 years in jail. If they had been caught with even one more person, they would have faced up to 25 years, because prosecutors assume that groups of three or more are in a cartel.