Peru drug pair ‘in brilliant health’
As they await sentencing, Father Maurice Foley visited the pair last Saturday where he found them sitting under a parasol in a yard in the jail drinking coffee and making phonecalls.
“[They are] brilliant. Very, very well,” he said.
“They weren’t in a cell. They were out in a wide open space sitting at a table with a parasol, they were talking and drinking coffee.
“As well as that they had telephone communication and they could use it for calling home. I thought they were in great form actually.”
Fr Foley, who had to wait a month to be allowed in to visit the young women — who appeared in court again yesterday — because of a flu outbreak in the jail, said the pair can sit out all day every day and make as many calls as they wish, so long as they have money to cover it.
Last week McCollum, aged 20, from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, and co-accused Reid, aged 20, from Glasgow, pleaded guilty to drug smuggling when they appeared before a judge.
They had hoped the admission would secure them a shorter sentence.
But prosecutors have demanded more information before accepting their admissions of guilt which the women hope will bring their jail time down to six years and eight months.
Fr Foley said he did not speak to the pair about their legal case.
The priest said the prosecutors want the girls to hand over details of the gang who coerced them into the trafficking.
“I think they just don’t have that information themselves. My firm belief is that they were conned, they were backed into a compromising situation and their handlers worked on that and got them to go to customs with drugs.”
