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Prosecutors in Peru reject British pair's drug smuggling guilty plea Prosecutors in Peru reject British pair's drug smuggling guilty plea
(about 1 hour later)
Peruvian prosecutors have said that they consider unacceptable the guilty pleas of two young British women caught trying to smuggle 11kg of cocaine to Spain in their luggage. Prosecutors rejected the guilty pleas of two women caught trying to smuggle 11kg of cocaine out of Peru in their luggage.
Prosecutor Juan Rosas said that he will ask for a new hearing to give Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid the chance to offer a more complete confession. Michaella McCollum, 20, from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and Melissa Reid, 20, from Glasgow, pleaded guilty on Tuesday behind closed doors when they appeared before a judge in Callao, near the capital Lima.
The women pleaded guilty on Tuesday to drug trafficking charges. If the plea is accepted, they face six years and eight months in prison without possibility of parole. Otherwise, they would go to trial and face a minimum of eight years if convicted. Prosecutors have asked for more information before accepting their admissions of guilt, which the women hope will bring their sentence down by a sixth six years and eight months without the chance of parole.
Rosas said on Wednesday that the women, both 20, need to explain why they initially claimed they were coerced by a gang of armed men into trying to spirit the drugs out of Peru's main international airport on 6 August hidden in mayonnaise packets. "The prosecution thinks the charges have not yet been completely embraced. They have simply accepted transporting drugs, but what has not yet been examined is their original version that they were kidnapped or were transporting the drugs against their will," Rosas said in an interview. A spokesman for the prosecutors' office in Callao said: "The two drug mules' guilty pleas have not been fully accepted, as far as the prosecutor is concerned, until they give more details.
"As far as the prosecution is concerned, these citizens were never kidnapped, were never threatened or coerced," he said. "If they stick to that unbelievable story the prosecution is not going to allow them the benefit of a guilty plea." "They will be asked to give another statement before the judge explaining where the drugs came from, who supplied them and why they said they had been forced to carry them by an armed gang."
The spokesman said a date was still to be determined for a new hearing, although following their guilty pleas court officials said the women would be sentenced on October 1.
Both women, who had been working on the Spanish party island of Ibiza this summer, have been held at the harsh Virgen de Fatima prison in Lima.
Court officials have said they may be transferred to the equally tough Santa Monica women's jail once they are sentenced. Prosecutor Juan Rosas told Associated Press on Wednesday: "The prosecution thinks the charges have not yet been completely embraced. They have simply accepted transporting drugs, but what has not yet been examined is their original version that they were kidnapped or were transporting the drugs against their will.
"As far as the prosecution is concerned, these citizens were never kidnapped, were never threatened or coerced.
"If they stick to that unbelievable story the prosecution is not going to allow them the benefit of a guilty plea."
He disputed a statement issued on Tuesday by the court where the women entered their plea that said they had provided information on their co-conspirators.He disputed a statement issued on Tuesday by the court where the women entered their plea that said they had provided information on their co-conspirators.
Their guilty pleas came on the same day that the UN declared that Peru has now overtaken Colombia as the world's number one coca leaf producer.
According to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, coca plantations in Peru covered 60,400 hectares last year.
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