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THE INITIAL COURT appearance of an Irish woman arrested in Peru on suspicion of drug trafficking has been delayed.
Michaella McCollum Connolly and her co-accused, Scottish teenager Melissa Reid, were due to appear before a judge in Lima today but the hearing could be held off until next Wednesday.
Michael Russell, the former honorary consul of Ireland in Peru who visited the women yesterday, believes proceedings will begin either Friday or next Monday.
“It has to be by next Wednesday anyway by law,” he told Morning Ireland. “They will be taken to the court…where they will be formally charged and assigned to prison.”
The pair are being held together and have been allowed a number of visitors, including the Archbishop of Lima Seán Walsh, who has protested their innocence. He told the Irish Independent he believed the girls “really and truly have been set up”.
According to Russell, the “big problem” will be proving the complicated story in court.
“Now there is one thing,” he said. “Michaella phoned her mother apparently every day until this started. Phone records will show that. If they were moving around like they said they were moving around, it was by plane. There should be plane tickets.”
The women are allowed to receive clothes and food once the food is packaged. Michaella is said to be eating, with rumours of an alleged hunger strike dismissed by both Russell and the family’s solicitor Peter Madden.
According to Madden, the 20-year-old is finding it difficult to cope but is remaining optimistic.
Dungannon native McCollum Connolly and Glasgow resident Reid were detained as they attempted to board a flight to Madrid from Lima last Tuesday. The National Police of Peru claim they found 11 kilos 590 grams of cocaine alkaloid hidden in food products packed in their luggage at Jorge Chavez airport.
They claim they did not know there were drugs in the packages that they were forced to take with them.
The family, which has issued a statement of support for their daughter, initially thought she was missing in Ibiza where she had been living for the summer.
The drugs that were recovered inside the food packages. (Kick Screameer/You Tube)
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Christ, my skins crawling after reading that.
The “love both” people will be delighted that she gave birth at age 10.
@Baltimore Lass: Here is a disgusting statistic from India ; A child under 10 is raped every 13 hours..
@Baltimore Lass: A cruel comment, nobody irrespective of their position would hold with the rape and resulting pregnancy of a young child, there are two child victims of this horror and whether it was a family member or other, someone is clearly abusing this little girl, all right thinking people would want such criminals apprehended and incarcerated, point scoring over this child’s suffering is in bad taste.
@Honeybee: Don’t be daft.You have so called “pro life” human rights activists in this country,who would fight tooth and nail for that 10 year old,to be forced to give birth…Baltimore Lass is spot on!
@Gerri Sant0r0: Baltimore lass stated people would be ‘delighted’ to see a ten year old give birth, really, you think anyone would be ‘delighted’ at such trauma and abuse?
@Honeybee :Where have you been hiding ? Didn’t you know that once that 10 year old child became pregnant,then she must give birth,according to those that ‘love both’? Marion ,where are you?
@Francis Mc Carthy: Typical of the pro choice side scoring points from a tragedy. Of the c.200000 abortions carried out in GB last year, how many were due to rape and incest? Carry-on making political football out these awful tragedies and show people how really hypocritical the pro choice side is. No ProLife person sees anything here to be celebrated.
Daniel : Do you believe that that 10 year old child should have a choice of ending that pregnancy in Ireland ?
@Daniel Dunne: And to answer your question,I will never know how many were for rape/incest,and the reason for this,is that rape is under-reported.And your lot are not “pro life” ..Your lot are ‘pro-mental torture’ ‘pro forced birth’ ‘pro death’ ..Away with yah.
@Daniel Dunne: They celebrated the incarceration, force feeding and forced caesarian of a rape victim as a “positive outcome”,
If a 10 year old Irish girl was pregnant, the 8th amendment would force her to give birth. A blunt instrument that tortures women and girls in this country if they can’t afford to travel.
India is a medieval society.
@Emmet Dillane: and Ireland is not
@Emmet Dillane: India would have allowed an abortion up to 20 weeks. Ireland, under the 8th amendment would have forced this child to give birth regardless.
It gets sicker and sicker. This little girl is going to need a lot of help and support. And the men who raped her need to be punished and then a lot more punishment.
That poor little girl … heart goes out to the child
To attempt to fathom the depth of trauma this little girl has gone through is horrifying. I truly hope she is receives the psychological support she will need.
Cases like these highlight the necessity in stengthening the global campaign against all forms of sexual violence.
“DNA results have led to suspicions that she may have been abused by others”. Looks like Sherlock is on the case.
India really have some the brightest people on this planet but then you hear these stories and think they have also the worst type of people on the planet and a crazy functioning society.
I seem to remember after the whole Savita Halipanavaar story that there were a lot of guest commentators from India in the liberal faction of the Irish media slating Irish healthcare, attitudes and law. We were supposed to be a backward society according to them and yet this kind of thing happens in their backyard all the time with no sign of them now and their ironic comments. It’s only a few months ago that rats got into a baby ward in a hospital in India and ate the face of a new born baby.
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