The latest development in the case of the British girls caught smuggling in Peru has a sinister twist. The girls claim that they were forced at gunpoint if they didn’t go ahead with the transportation. Their families were also targeted as the bandits said they had their home addresses on file. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/10240751/British-drug-mules-claim-they-were-forced-at-gunpoint-to-carry-cocaine-by-Colombian-gang.html
I’m not sure how this will wash with the Peruvian authorities. No doubt, their jails are full of foreign drug smugglers that say they were set up.
Never in a million years, not for all the money in the world would I ever contemplate running through customs with illegal narcotics and I‘m positive I can vouch that everyone else here is of the same mind. The only experience I have of overseas jails (I don’t have any of British jails either, in case you were asking) is through TV shows like Banged Up Abroad and stuff like that. As it’s TV you don’t know if they are deliberately making them out to be worse than they are. The newspapers are printing that the conditions in their Peruvian cells are harsh and unclean. Other reports state that the gangsters might get to the girls in jail to stop them from testifying. Possibly, this could be why the girls are on hunger strike to avoid being poisoned.
The late Pablo Escobar only used a courier once and once only. The mule had only one shot at the title before the crime baron employed a new runner. It’s high stakes and there’s winners and losers in the drug game. There are no such thing as draws as those languishing in the abyss will tell you.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Indeed, JW. You probably saw this report of a college friend of mine who he alleges was duped into becoming an ass, sorry mule.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/05/03/2868889/unc-professor-imprisoned-in-argentina.html
It’s hard to keep up with the drug peddlers, there’s that many of them. Don’t know how I missed that one, especially with a bikini model involved.
Quite right TR, I would also add that I would also report anybody that I knew who was, I hate the drug “trade”
I just don’t get this. In the first interview they denied any knowledge of the drugs. Now, if I suddenly acquired 11 kilos of extra ‘baggage’ worth £1.5 million, I think I would know about it. Next thing they are claiming they did know and were being threatened into acting as mules. If so, why not get to passport control, tell them and ask for help and protection? It doesn’t add up.
OZ
Of course it doesn’t add up!
There is no direct flight from Ibiza to Peru, They must have changed flights in some mainland European country.
Why did they not ask the authorities for help before they acquired the drugs and before they reached Peru?
Maybe they think we are all as stupid as they are!!
Guilty as hell!
They deserve 20 years for sheer stupidity!
Why would Colombian drug barons blackmail two British girls, who don’t want to smuggle drugs, when there are plenty of people who would be willing to do it for a price?
At one time there were adverts here showing a gaol cell barred window with a noose swinging behind it. The advert stated quite clearly that if one got caught smuggling drugs into Indonesia, Singapore or other such places the sentence was death… yet still people tried, got caught and were executed.
I’m against the death penalty – but I struggle to maintain that belief in the case of terrorists and drug dealers, since they are prepared to kill and maim indiscriminately.
I recall that when I first visited Shanghai there was a large poster at the passport check which stated unambiguously that the penalty for drug crimes was death. i was discouraged! 😦
Thank you, Christina, Boadicea and Janus. The world has recovered its equilibrium. 🙂
OZ
If I may so so. those two look rough and ready for anything!
Now now PapaG, never judge a book by it’s cover but then again, if it walks like a duck …. 😉
Soutie, when you study faces as I do and there is a waddling gait …. (NB I used to be a Prison Visitor in Holloway Prison, London. Plenty of mule stories in there,)