Being a mule
A disheartening look into the drug trade. From
BBC News:
Sunshine island's deadly trade
The majority of foreign women in UK jails are there on drugs offences. Here, one Trinidadian woman explains why she risked her life and liberty by swallowing cocaine to smuggle into Britain.
When the men approached Sonia Joseph (not her real name) and said they had a job for her she was pleased.
The single mother-of-six had had trouble making ends meet since moving to a village near Port of Spain, Trinidad, two years earlier.
She knew the two men - they had helped her out when she was between jobs, organising a car to take her children to school, sometimes bringing her food.
"I assumed that was a favour, a friendly gesture because they knew my cousins," she said. "I thought they were safe."
But what Sonia did not realise was that after two years spent winning her confidence, the men now required payment-in-kind for their "favours".
The job, the men explained, meant swallowing packages of cocaine powder, tightly wrapped in latex and then going on a journey - she was not told where.
"I said 'I can pay some other way, through work'. They said 'it is not an option, you owe us.'"
If she did not comply, she was told, "anything might happen" to her children between home and school.
And the X-Ray of "sonia's' belly:
The little oval shapes you are looking at are 100 latex-wrapped 1.2 Gram packages of pure Cocaine. If one of those had ruptured, she would be dead.
They put her in jail but the article says nothing about the fate of her two "friends" back in Trinidad.
And where the *$^#@ does
Trinidad get cocaine?
Follow the money...
Posted by DaveH at October 4, 2005 12:53 AM