2 British women charged in Peru with drug smuggling

Two women from Northern Ireland and Scotland arrested in Peru were charged with trying to smuggle cocaine worth $2.3 million out of the country, officials said. Peter Madden, the lawyer for one of the women, Michaella McCollum of Dungannon, Northern Ireland, said his client and Melissa Reid of Lenzie, Scotland, would plead not guilty, the BBC reported Wednesday. The women, both 20, spent the past two weeks in custody in Lima because of the drug trafficking allegations. They were taken from their holding cells Tuesday and transferred to Callao province, which has jurisdiction in their case, officials said. Madden criticized the conditions in which the women were being kept, saying they hadn't been fed all day Tuesday. "The conditions inside the holding cells are pretty grim," he said. "There are no blankets -- it's not clean." "And the most important thing is they haven't actually been offered any food today [Tuesday] and it doesn't look as though they are going to be." McCollum and Reid are accused of trying to smuggle 24 pounds of cocaine out of Peru hidden in their luggage. They were stopped while trying to board a flight from Lima to Madrid two weeks ago. The women said they were forced to act as drug mules by an armed gang while they worked in bars on the Spanish island of Ibiza and went to Peru under duress.