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Movies & TV

24th Jun 2021

A BBC documentary on the Peru Two is coming next month

Sarah McKenna Barry

The series will focus on how Michaella McCollum got on in a notorious Peruvian prison.

A documentary on Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid will air on BBC iPlayer and BBC One next month.

The five-part series, entitled High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule, will focus primarily on McCollum, who was arrested alongside Reid in 2013. The duo were attempting to smuggle €1.75 million worth of cocaine out of Peru.

McCollum, who is from Dungannon in Northern Ireland, was working in a nightclub in Ibiza at the time. She made the trip to Peru but tried to leave after two days.

It’s understood that the women hid 11kg of cocaine inside jelly and porridge packets. They had been paid £4,000 (€4,682) to smuggle the drugs out of the country.

Reid and McCollum were subsequently sentenced to six years and eight months in prison.

In 2016, the two women applied to return to the UK, and they were released in April and March of that year. McCollum detailed her experience in her book, You’ll Never See Daylight Again.

The documentary, which will be told in Michaella’s own words, will examine how she got in a Peruvian prison.

The synopsis reads: “Aged 19, Michaella McCollum boarded her first ever flight for her first foreign holiday in Ibiza. Just a few weeks later she was arrested at Lima airport in Peru after failing to smuggle more than a million pounds worth of cocaine in her suitcase.

“Told in her own words, McCollum recounts the extraordinary story of how she became infamous worldwide as one half of the Peru Two.

“From how she was recruited as a cartel drugs mule and came to be arrested, tried and jailed in one of the most notorious maximum security prisons in Peru, to the even more extraordinary story of how she got herself out again.”

High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule will air on 5 July on BBC One.