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RTÉ
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"I'm not a bad person" - Michaella McCollum's first interview to air tonight
“I’ve forgotten the things that everybody takes for granted in life.”
7.54pm, 3 Apr 2016
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RTÉ WILL TONIGHT air the first interview with freed drug smuggler Michaella McCollum in which she says that she is “not a bad person”.
McCollum was jailed along with Scottish woman Melissa Reid after being arrested at Lima Airport in August 2013, having been found with a large quantity of cocaine in food packets inside their luggage.
Both received sentences of six and a half years, but Michaella was released on parole this week.
In the interview, to air on RTÉ One tonight at 9.30pm, the 23-year-old says that she had forgotten certain things while in prison.
“I’ve forgotten the things that everybody takes for granted in life.
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“Seeing the sun, seeing the darkness, seeing the moon and the stars, things I haven’t seen in almost three years.”
She said that she understood the potential consequences of the drugs reaching Europe.
“If the drugs had of got back [to Europe] what could have happened, I probably would have had a lot of blood on my hands.
“I potentially could have filled Europe full of a lot of drugs.
“I could have potentially killed a lot of people, not directly but I could have caused a lot of harm to people.”
However, she maintains that she is a good person who made a decision in a “moment of madness”.
“I made a decision in a moment of madness….I’m not a bad person..I want to demonstrate that I’m a good person.”
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