Review by Mark Langabeer, Hastings and Rye Labour member
A very interesting BBC Three production reported on the case of two 20-year-old women convicted of drug trafficking in Peru in 2013. It was a case that drew a lot of attention in the media at the time and all and sundry had an opinion on their guilt or otherwise.
The programme interviewed Michaella McCollum and people from the Peruvian legal system about the arrest and convictions. Michaella described her background as a girl from a family of ten, who lived in a small, terraced house in a rural area near Dungannon in Northern Ireland. She described her life as one “surrounded by shootings and sheep”.
She took a flight to Ibiza with the intention of living and working on the Island and she subsequently worked at a bar where drugs of all kinds were taken. Enjoying the nightclub scene, she admitted to often getting high on alcohol and recreational drugs, and she became friends with a known drug dealer who offered her £5,000 if she would transport drugs from the Spanish mainland.
She wanted the cash so that she could stay in Ibiza, describing bar work pay as below the minimum wage. Michaella said that she was told to travel to Barcelona, but on arrival she was told that she was to travel to Lima, Peru, with another young woman of the same age.
Thought Lima was another city in Spain
At the time, she said, she thought Lima was another city in Spain and she and Melissa Reid, who was from Scotland, ended up travelling to a remote area of Peru and joining other tourists on a coach visit to various sites. They were eventually given 11 kilos of cocaine concealed in bags labelled as porridge, and they were arrested at the airport before they left and charged with trafficking cocaine valued at around £1.5 million.
They faced a maximum of 15 years in prison, and initially they claimed they were coerced by a drug gang and pleaded not guilty. But The Peruvian prosecutors didn’t believe them and offered to reduce their sentences if they cooperated.
A campaign was organised on their behalf and money was raised to help with legal fees and family travel costs. A journalist from the Mirror was able to visit them in jail and gave a sympathetic coverage of their plight. But media and public opinion became hostile when it was discovered that they had lied.
Michaella later expressed remorse about her actions and the effects it had on her family. When they did change their story and gave the authorities information about their contacts, one former drugs cartel lawyer pointed out that this could have led to retribution from the gangs.
Having confessed, pleaded guilty and cooperated, the two women’s sentences were reduced to six years and eight months in high security. This involved imprisonment with murderers and other violent criminals. Michaella described the depression and fear that she initially experienced when starting her sentence. The only thing that gave her some solace was listening to music during the long evenings and nights.
Unable to speak Spanish
The prison authorities gave her work as a sewing machinist and was she was shocked at the public displays of sexual activity. She also saw a vicious assault on an inmate and wondered when it would be her turn. Being unable to speak Spanish meant there was a barrier to other inmates. The one saving grace was that at the trial they had an interpreter and feeling sorry for the two young women, she brought in food and much needed water supplies for them. She also suggested that they should try to learn Spanish to get something ‘positive’ from their experience in jail.
Michaella did exactly that. She began learning Spanish and became close friends with some of her cell mates. Around half of the female prison population were drug traffickers. The programme makers interviewed her former cell mate, who explained that she had had no job and had a family to feed and that had been her reason for involvement with the cartels.
Michaella also discovered that there was a hair salon at the prison and she was able to get work there as a hairstylist and manicurist. She even ended up as an elected advocate for the female prisoners and was able to improve water supplies and introduce dance sessions for the inmates. In many respects, as she says herself, prison was the makings of Michaella McCollum, although her priority remained her desire to get back to her family.
At a parole hearing, Michaella was finally granted a release after three years imprisonment, with the proviso that she never returned to Peru. Mellissa Reid’s release came shortly afterwards. Apart from her family and close friends, she was hardly given a hero’s welcome. Critics noted her ‘healthy’ appearance after serving three years in a Peruvian high security prison.
“My experiences made me the person I am”
Michaella is still living in Ireland and is now married with children. She is also taking a degree at Belfast University. She clearly regrets the pain she caused her family and her previous behaviour, but she believes, she said, that people can change, and her own experience has made her the person she is today.
As these instances show, people’s involvement with drug trafficking often stems from poverty conditions and a need to make quick money. The drive to participate in the drug trade on those terms simply wouldn’t exist if poverty was eradicated.
I’m personally not convinced that legalisation of recreational drugs is a solution if it meant that they would be sold en masse like alcohol and cigarettes and that criminal cartels were simply replaced by legal profiteers. One way around that, I think, would be decriminalising the use of drugs and personal possession, but at the same time creating a state monopoly, so that drug production, distribution and use were managed by the state and coordinated where necessary with social and detox programmes.
Many years ago, I was employed by a cigarette-making company. During the Second World War, it made bullets instead of fags. Neither are socially useful, but it illustrates how precision engineering was and remains adaptable. Production across the whole economy, under a democratic plan could make items that meet real needs, rather than aimed solely for profit.
The programme can be found on BBC i-player here.
