Drugs Mules or innocent ?

[AtW]

They're guilty, lying morons. Whorons, if you will.

Oddly enough it appears that those in court who lied a lot to try to avoid being pronounced guilty don't get any extra punishment for perjury - surely lies in court don't come free as part of the main sentence?

[Paddy]

Guilty!

[Alias]

Stone them!

[NotAllThere]

Oddly enough it appears that those in court who lied a lot to try to avoid being pronounced guilty don't get any extra punishment for perjury - surely lies in court don't come free as part of the main sentence?

If you plead guilty, you can expect (but might not get) leniency. The more lies told during the trial, the stiffer the sentence.

[BrilloPad]

If you plead guilty, you can expect (but might not get) leniency. The more lies told during the trial, the stiffer the sentence.

Or in Thailand, the more lies the more painful the death.

[fullyautomatix]

Would Mitch?

[AtW]

If you plead guilty, you can expect (but might not get) leniency. The more lies told during the trial, the stiffer the sentence.

But surely lying under oath is a separate crime that should be punished in addition to whatever the person was pronouced guilty? Now if they've chosen NOT to give evidence then this won't apply.

Just saying like.

[Dominic Connor]

Probably guilty

There's few hard facts and narco police aren't exactly known for their respect for the truth, but my call is that they started off nearly innocent as users who found they could self finance then got a bit greedier and found that the ways out weren't attractive.

To me the telling fact is the size of the haul.

They were being trusted with a decent sized asset, 1.5 million worth according to the (almost nearly trustworthy) narco police.

If you're doing a transaction of that, you want people handling it who won't hand it over to the police and even if you've issued industry standard threats there is the issue that a lot of 20 year olds when threatened with horrible death and forced to operate in countries they don't know well, where the penalties for getting caught aren't nice, many would simply fall apart, losing your goods and quite possibly leading the authorities back to you.

That means you wouldn't just throw them in at the deep end, you'd try them out on smaller deals.

But guilt or innocence is simply irrelevant in this case.
Its a political decision mediated by a Peruvian judicial process that is by design absurdly slow in order to maximise the extraction of bribes. The UK government has little leverage over Peru and only pays lip service to making sure they have a fair trial unless there's the clearest possible evidence that they've been fitted up.
At least they're white and vaguely attractive which means the UK press will care a bit every so often.
Their MP (of whatever party) will get a jolly to Peru to "check that they're being treated properly" and utter carefully crafted vacuous statements that means when they're finally judged they get some credit if they are released but no tulip if they're found guilty.
Then 5 years from now, they will have some "illness" and be released on humanitarian grounds so that the Peruvian government gets to look both tough on drugs but also humane. This will coincide with a big British firm getting a large contract in Peru to meddle with their water supply.

[doodab]

They were being trusted with a decent sized asset, 1.5 million worth according to the (almost nearly trustworthy) narco police.

As is usual in these situations, the "value" seems to have been computed by multiplying a fairly high per gram street price by the number of grams in order to make it sound like the police have made a big dent in the drug dealers pockets.

SOCA put the wholesale price of pure cocaine at £47-£54k per kg, in the UK, which has the most expensive wholesale prices in Europe. It's worth a bit less in Spain, and considerably less in Peru where the street price is something like $4.50 per gram. The girls had ~ 11kg. So it's still a lot of money, but not quite what the police are claiming.

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/secured/w...oin_Prices.pdf

[AtW]

The girls had ~ 11kg.

It's not a small amount.

I am sure those who gave it to the girls told them about horrible things that would happen to their families IF they decide to steal the stuff.