Peru drug pair 'plead guilty'

An Irish woman and a Scottish woman have pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle £1.5m worth of cocaine out of Peru, sources said tonight.

Michaella McCollum (aged 20) from Dungannon, Co Tyrone and Melissa Reid (aged 19) from Scotland, made the behind-closed-doors plea when they appeared before a judge in the capital Lima today.

Sources said the women had taken full responsibility for the drug trafficking.

They were caught trying to board a flight from Lima to Spain with 24lbs of cocaine in food packets hidden inside their luggage last month.

Speaking outside the court in Lima, lawyer Meyer Fishman said he could not comment until the young women were sentenced.

Both women, who had been working on the party island of Ibiza this summer, had previously claimed they were coerced into carrying the drugs by Colombian drug lords who kidnapped them at gunpoint.

The two had the option of pleading guilty in exchange for a lower sentence.

The pair were told that if they plead guilty, they could face a minimum of six years and eight months in prison with no eligibility for parole.

According to Peru’s national prisons institute, 90% of the 1,648 foreigners in the country’s prisons are either sentenced or awaiting trial for drug trafficking.