'Trafficking mule' Brits stuck in hellish jails - why some do it and grim fates
Bella May Culley, 18, and Charlotte May Lee, 21, were arrested with a day of each other and face decades in foreign jails, but they are just two out of hundreds of British nationals languishing in foreign prisons on drugs offences
Two young British women face the terrifying prospect of decades behind bars in hellhole jails abroad after being caught smuggling drugs - but they are among hundreds of others currently locked up in prisons across the globe.
Bella May Culley, 18, from Billingham, County Durham, who was detained in Georgia on May 11 after 14kg of cannabis was found in her travel bag, faces life behind bars in the country's notorious Soviet-era women's jail.
A day later, Charlotte May Lee, 21, from Coulsdon, south London, was arrested at Colombo International Airport in Sri Lanka, with 45kg of synthetic cannabis, known as "kush," concealed in her luggage. The former TUIA air hostess could spend a year in the harsh Negombo prison before she is even sentenced.
Both women, whose cases are not believed to be connected, deny the charges they face.
According to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), more than 850 British nationals are currently locked up in prisons across the globe for drug-related offences. Offences that may carry cautions in the UK are often penalised with long prison sentences when overseas, while in 33 countries or territories, some drug offences carry the death penalty.
Young Brits often find themselves detained for months without trial and facing distressing living conditions. Prisoners Abroad is currently supporting 80 Brits between the ages of 18 and 30 held in foreign countries for drug offences. Two-thirds of these are still awaiting trial, while others are serving sentences from a year to nearly 39 years.
Here are some of the other Brits locked up abroad…
Lindsay Sandiford - Bali
British drugs mule grandmother Lindsay Sandiford has been incarcerated in a cramped cell inside Bali's hellish Kerobokan prison since 2013, where she is on death row facing execution by firing squad.
The grandmother-of-two was sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle £ 1.6 million worth of cocaine into Indonesia's capital by stuffing it into the lining of her suitcase.
Sandiford, from Cheltenham, claimed she was coerced by a UK-based drug syndicate threatening her children. But despite cooperating with authorities and assisting in a sting operation that led to further arrests, judges imposed the maximum penalty, citing damage to Bali's image.
Her appeals have been unsuccessful, and the UK government has declined to fund her legal representation, adhering to its policy of not providing legal aid for nationals abroad.
Now grey-haired and suffering arthritis, she spends days at a time knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five metres cell prison she shares with four other women prisoners, most of them poorly-educated local women convicted of drug offences.
Sandiford has expressed feelings of hopelessness, especially after the execution of fellow inmates, stating, 'I just want to get it over with. I feel like just giving up.' A rare family visit in April 2025, including her grandchildren, provided a brief respite from her isolation. Legal experts suggest potential changes in Indonesian law could commute her sentence to life imprisonment, offering a glimmer of hope for eventual repatriation.
Thomas Parker - Bali
Electrician Thomas Parker was arrested in January after collecting a package from a taxi driver containing over a kilogram of MDMA, the main component in the party drug ecstasy, near Bali's Kuta Beach. Accused of trying to push Class A drugs, the 32-year-old looked bewildered as he was paraded in front of the world's media while wearing an orange jumpsuit following his arrest.
He was initially charged with drug trafficking, which carries the death penalty in Indonesia. The charge was later reduced to concealing information after investigators concluded the drugs were sent by a friend, not ordered by Parker himself.
Police said Parker was noticed 'acting suspiciously' by officers while he was collecting the package. When officers approached him, he allegedly discarded the package in a panic and fled. However, he was traced back to the villa where he was staying and arrested.
During his trial, Parker, from the village of Seaton near Workington, Cumbria, maintained that he did not order the package and had initially refused to collect it, doing so only after a friend assured him it was safe and would not endanger him.
Prosecutors have sought a one-year prison sentence, but under Indonesian law, judges could still revisit the trafficking charge. A verdict is expected on May 27, 2025. Parker has expressed deep remorse, stating, "I am very sorry and apologise, I know it was a mistake. I promise not to repeat it again, because I really didn't know that [the package] was drugs."
Modou Adams - Peru
British male model Modou Adams flaunted his jet set lifestyle on TikTok, but in 2023 was jailed for nearly seven years in Peru after being caught trying to fly out of the country with £300,000 worth of cocaine.
The Londoner, 25, wowed his thousands of social media fans with his globetrotting under the self-styled moniker of 'boywholives', but was held at Lima's international airport as he tried to check in for a flight to London via Paris with almost three kilos of cocaine in his suitcase.
He was handed his sentence in a rapid trial 24 hours after his arrest by the same police force that held Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid, the so-called Peru Two, in August 2013, and is still serving his sentence in one of Lima's notorious high-security prisons.
Modou, a former marketing and public relations intern described online as an 'experienced' model, had filmed himself posing as a tourist in Cuco, a favourite cocaine pick-up for drug mules and the city McCollum and Reid visited before their arrests, and posted selfies on the road to Andes Mountains Incan citadel Machu Picchu.
The dramatic moment he was taken into custody by two anti-drugs squad officers as he checked in for his flight was also filmed on cameras at Jorge Chavez International Airport. One of the officers used a knife to cut through the false bottom of the suitcase where the cocaine was found and held it up as Adams looked on, horrified.
Anti-drugs prosecutor Lincoln Fuentes said: 'It wasn't the first time this British national had come to Peru. The first time he had also taken drugs out of the country, most probably in the same way, with a specially-prepared suitcase.
'Each drug mule is paid £5,200 to £6,000 per drug run as well as getting all their expenses paid, including the tourist trips they enjoy to camouflage their real reason for coming here. The objective this man had for coming here was solely to transport drugs back to Britain.'
John Twell - Venezuela
John Twell is serving a 15-year sentence at the Simon Bolivar prison for foreigners in Caracas after he was caught trying to smuggle cocaine worth £ 4 million out of Venezuela in 2011. The 63-year-old from Spalding, Lincs, was stopped as he tried to board a flight to Madrid, when police found 31kg of the drug in two bags.
Cut off from the outside world and forced to do disciplinary drills praising the revolution of Hugo Chavez every day, the only time he was interviewed was when a Sky News team entered the jail in 2020.
Twell insisted he wasn't a career criminal but had made one stupid decision. "I wanted to start a business in England, I wanted to buy my own truck because years ago I was a truck driver, so I wanted to buy my own truck and start working for myself, and you need capital," he said.
He added, 'We have no telephone calls, and we have no communication. Before, when we first came here, we had a telephone call every week for five minutes or two minutes… but now we have no communication with anybody. The only way we know what's going on outside is if the gentlemen here (the guards) tell us."
Despite being estranged from his family and wanting to serve the rest of his sentence in the UK, Twell said he had come to accept his situation.
"When you've been in prison for eight and a half years, there's no point crying. Why would I cry? I'm sick as it is, it's no good me getting down and depressed as I'll get more sick."
Kim Hall - USA
Beautician Kim Hall was caught carrying 43 kilograms of cocaine packed into two suitcases through Chicago's O'Hare Airport in August 2024 after getting off a flight from Cancun in August last year.
She was about to board a connecting flight home to Manchester when she was apprehended, admitting to investigators that she'd been given the bags during a trip to Mexico to take back to the UK.
The volume of drugs seized means Hall, 28, from Middlesbrough, finds herself facing one of the harshest sentences, with Class X Felonies typically carrying up to 60 years in prison.
In November, while on house arrest as she awaited trial for the drug offences, Hall appeared on ITV's This Morning and claimed that two British men, whom she met while on holiday in Portugal, offered her a free trip to Mexico.
This week, Hall was sent back to prison after supposedly trying to leave the country ahead of her trial on May 27. She is said to have presented herself to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in an attempt to trick them into deporting her.
Judge Michael McHale wrote that Hall was 'almost successful in her attempt' to flee the United States and had a flight back to the UK booked before cops realised what was happening.
Bella May Coley and Charlotte May Lee both deny committing drug trafficking offences.
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