No deal bid from Peru drug mules

Drug mules Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum have yet to make a fresh bid to strike a deal and secure shorter prison sentences.

The women were hauled back to court on Tuesday after being told their guilty pleas were not good enough. They expanded on statements they made a week earlier in the hope of avoiding trial on drugs trafficking charges and receiving jail sentences of just over six and a half years.

But state prosecutors said last night they had yet to receive any official request from the women’s defence team for an early termination of the case against them.

Under Peruvian law, drug mules who benefit from an early termination process automatically receive a sentence of six years and eight months a sixth off the minimum eight-year sentence for drug trafficking. Juan Mendoza Abarca, head of the anti-drugs unit prosecuting the women, said: “We have received no request yet from Melissa and Michaella’s lawyers requesting an early termination. It’s their responsibility to request it. We’re continuing our investigation with a view to going to trial in the meantime.”

Court officials and public prosecutors said the fact Tuesday’s hearing was private prevented them from going into detail about what was said. But Dr Mendoza said the state prosecution probe would last around six months if the case ended up going to trial.

Peru’s Prison Service denied reports Melissa, from Lenzie near Glasgow, and Michaella, from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, had been transferred to a different jail or that there were any plans to move them.

It was reported on Wednesday the women, arrested on August 6 as they tried to leave Peru with more than 11 kilos of cocaine in their suitcases, had been moved from Virgen de Fatima prison in Lima to an unnamed “modern well-equipped” prison. Irish priest Maurice Foley described how he found them sitting under a parasol in a yard in the jail, drinking coffee and making phone calls. The Prison Service spokesman said: “The women continue to be held in Virgen de Fatima prison.”

Prosecutors have adopted a carrot and stick approach towards Melissa and Michaella, both 20, since their arrests at Lima’s Jorge Chavez airport as they tried to board an Air Europa flight to Spain.

The women ended up confessing to attempting to smuggle the drugs out of the country after weeks of pleading their innocence. But their guilty pleas and attempts to seek “early termination” were rejected when they continued to insist they were coerced into becoming drugs mules after being kidnapped by Colombian mafia in Ibiza where they had been working over the summer.

Dr Mendoza has hinted the women could be free by Christmas if they help track down those behind the criminal gang and testify against them.

Tuesday’s hearing took place in private at a makeshift courtroom inside a men’s prison called Sarita Colonia. A spokesman for Callao Criminal Court number four which is investigating the women, said: “Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid amplified their statements. The hearing in front of judge Pedro Miguel Puente Bardales took place because on September 25 state prosecutors asked in writing that before the early termination hearing which had originally been scheduled for October 1, the defendants expand on their court statements.

“At a previous hearing both women had accepted their guilt for the crimes they were accused of, showing repentance and asking at the same time to be accepted within the early termination process.”