19-05-2025
Ex TUI flight attendant facing jail after ‘trying to smuggle £1.2m drugs'
A former flight attendant could spend decades "rotting behind bars" after she was allegedly caught smuggling £1.2million worth of drugs while travelling.
Charlotte May Lee was arrested after arriving in Sri Lanka from Thailand on Monday, May 12. The 21-year-old, who previously worked for TUI, had left her home in Surrey for the Far Eastern country two weeks ago, following vague remarks to friends about meeting a man while there.
However, at Bandaranaike International Airport in the city of Colombo, her two suitcases were found to reportedly have been filled with 46kg of a highly addictive drug known as kush.
The synthetic substance is made from a combination of drugs, chemicals and even human bones, reports the Mirror.
A friend of Lee's family told the Sun on Sunday : 'We're frantically worried. She was arrested then seemingly abandoned and is rotting in a jail cell. She's very scared.'
Another friend said: 'She's been told if convicted, because of the size of the drugs haul, she's looking at between 20 and 25 years in jail.
'British Embassy staff warned her she's going nowhere soon.'
Kush is 25 times more potent than opioid fentanyl, and is often cut with deadly chemicals. It was first discovered in Sierra Leone, West Africa, around four years ago, however no official statistics exist on the exact number of related deaths.
What is known is its horrific effects on users' mental health, with figures from the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital showing a surge of nearly 4,000 per cent in kush-related admissions between 2020 and 2023, totalling 1,865. Around 63 per cent of current patients presented with issues linked to taking the drug.
A National Task force on Drugs and Substance Abuse has been established to tackle the crisis. Centres are expected to be opened "adequately staffed by trained professionals to offer care and support to people with drug addiction".
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Lee's case is similar to that of fellow Brit, 18-year-old Bella May Culley, who was detained in Georgia on May 11 carrying £200,000 worth of cannabis.
She had vanished and stopped contact with her family while travelling in Southeast Asia, before turning up in the ex-Soviet country.
If found guilty of the drugs offences, she faces a long prison sentence- potentially life behind bars in the worst case.
Her grandfather William Culley, 80, previously revealed: "She went to the Philippines to see somebody, a lad there, who she used to go out with a couple of years ago, who was working out there.
"She said, ' I'm going on my own, but I'm meeting Ross out there.' Or Russ, I'm not sure what his name is. He was working out there for his father's company or something – but now I wonder if what she told me was true."
He added: "Last night they were told they could see her in the morning. They said they'd ring me straight after they had seen her, but I haven't had a call. They must still be waiting."
