Peru Suspects In Kidnap Claim

A woman from Dungannon, County Tyrone and a woman from Scotland currently facing drugs smuggling charges in Peru have claimed they were forced at gunpoint to carry £1.5m of cocaine in their luggage.

20-year-old Michaella McCollum Connolly and 19-year-old Melissa Reid were arrested last week before boarding a plane from Lima to Spain.

Peruvian airport officials say they found 11kg of illegal drugs in their luggage.

The women claim they were smuggling the drugs to save both their and their families' lives from a South American gang who threatened them at gunpoint.

They say it began when they were approached separately by a man with an English accent in Ibiza, where the two women had been working over the summer.

Miss Reid told the Daily Mirror: "We were given no option. If we didn't do as we were told we would be dead.

"We have no doubt they would have killed us both without hesitation if we didn't do as we were told."

In an interview with the Mirror, Miss McCollum Connolly and Miss Reid told a journalist the gang had taken their passports and mobile phones and ordered them to carry luggage onto the plane.

They claim they had never met before they were kidnapped and taken to a house owned by a drug gang in Majorca.

The Daily Mirror's editor Chris Bucktin interviewed the women.

He said: "They admit that they have cried themselves several times.

"They are in two separate cells. Melissa is sharing with another girl and Michaella is by herself. There is nothing in those cells, they actually sleep on fibreglass beds."

Peter Madden, of Madden & Finucane, is representing the family of Ms McCollum-Connolly.

They women have been told they could face a three-year wait before their trial is even heard.

(IT/CD)