Peru Two drug mule warns Britons of 'hellish conditions' inside prison
A British woman who spent three years in a hellhole prison for drug smuggling has warned of the horrific consequences if found guilty.
Michaella McCollum, one half of the Peru Two, was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison after trying to smuggle 12kg of cocaine from Ibiza to Peru in 2013.
She applied for parole three years into her sentence and was expelled from Peru months later, in June 2016.
Since then Michaella has featured in two documentaries and written a book about her experiences – but she's now speaking out again with a dire warning to young Brits about the dangers of drug smuggling and the awful conditions they face if convicted.
It comes as two young Brits, 18-year-old Bella May Culley and 21-year-old Charlotte May Lee, have both hit the headlines facing drug smuggling charges.
The two cases are unrelated: Bella is charged with trying to smuggle 14kg of cannabis into Georgia, while Charlotte faces similar charges in Sri Lanka relating to 46kg of synthetic drug kush.
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Both of them face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
'I could not do 20 years in a prison like that,' Michaella told MailOnline, 'I just couldn't. And that's what those girls are facing.'
Michaella, now a 31-year-old mum of two, recalled her experiences with prison food writhing with maggots, cockroaches, and pushy guards.
'I remember how I'd lay all the rice out, to see which grains I could eat and which were maggots. Back home, it was reported that I'd gone on hunger strike, but I hadn't,' she said.
'[My mum would] bring a whole chicken, which I'd eat with my fingers, and there would be cockroaches climbing up onto the table and I'd just flick them away. I mean, they didn't even bother me, by then.
'You become so used to it. And I suppose there is a level of guilt and shame that you feel it's acceptable, even though it isn't.
I've got goosebumps, just talking about the cockroaches. But then… normal. It's astonishing what you adapt to, and how resilient you can be.'
Michaella says she shared a 'bedroom' with hundreds of other inmates sleeping on concrete bunks. Prisoners would exchange sexual favours for basic items like water, and guards would take items from visitors' bags and never return them.
She describes her decision to act as a drugs mule aged 19 as 'the greatest mistake of my life' – and while Michaella agrees she deserved her sentence, she's not sure if she could have survived for 20 years in the Lima prison, Ancon 2.
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She was arrested alongside 20-year-old Melissa Reid, from Scotland, who she'd never met before their trip to Ibiza, and she was offered £5,000 to smuggle the drugs.
And Bella May Culley's arrest was 'almost exactly the same' as hers, Michaella said.
'Her mum had reported her missing, then it emerged that she'd been arrested. There were such parallels with my case,' she explained.
'I couldn't help but feel bad for them. They [Bella and Charlotte] are 18 and 21.
'Whatever they have done, it's so young to be caught up in something like this, and I know what they are going to go through. And their families.
'It's the worst thing anybody can have to face.'
Bella has since told the court in Tbilisi that she is pregnant.
Michaella commented: 'As a mum, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to give birth in that sort of place, and to potentially have the child taken from you and put into care.
'That adds a whole new, terrifying, dimension. It's just incredibly sad.
'It's easy to look at girls like this and think 'how could you be so stupid?' but I look back at myself and think exactly that.
'I don't know the circumstances in detail here, but I do know that of all the women I came across who had been involved in drug smuggling, only about 10% were doing it as a business, who knew the risks and accepted them.
'The vast majority were the victims of some sort of coercion, usually by men. Prisons all over the world are full of women who have been caught up in something like this.
'And the men at the top rarely get caught. The men who pulled all the strings in my case were never held to account.
'At the time I was so high (on cocaine) that I could barely walk. Yet the men around me were all sober. More Trending
'I thought they were my friends, but actually they didn't give a s*** about me.
'When you are 19 and 20 you are so hopelessly naive. You don't even know that there are such bad things in the world, never mind that it could happen to you.
'But in a lot of cases like mine the money isn't life changing, which makes me think even more that there is an element of being tricked into it.
'I mean who would risk spending 20 years of your life in prison for £3,000 or £4,000 or even £10,000. Even £50,000 isn't enough. No amount of money is worth your freedom.'
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