Charlotte May Lee, 21, faces years in a Sri Lankan prison after being caught with 46kg of cannabis. The former flight attendant insists she was set up and had no idea drugs were in her luggage.
A young British woman accused of smuggling £1.2 million worth of cannabis into Sri Lanka has broken her silence from behind bars, claiming she was set up and had no idea drugs were hidden in her suitcase.
Charlotte May Lee, 21, from Coulsdon, South London, was arrested in Colombo after flying in from Thailand, where she’d been working on a booze cruise. Authorities say they found 46kg of Kush—a potent strain of synthetic cannabis—in her luggage at the airport.
Speaking for the first time since her arrest, Lee told MailOnline from inside Negombo Prison that she’s living in despair and shock. “I had never seen them before. I didn’t expect it all when they pulled me over at the airport. I thought it was going to be filled with all my stuff,” she said.
Lee explained that she’d packed her bags the night before her flight from Bangkok, then went out for the evening. “So I left my bags in the hotel room and headed for the night out. As they were already packed I didn’t check them again in the morning. They must have planted it then,” she claimed, adding: “I know who did it.”
Since her arrest, Lee has been moved from the Police Narcotics Bureau, where she says she was watched by a guard 24/7 and slept on a bug-infested sofa, to Negombo Prison—a notoriously tough facility.
“I feel as though I have no human rights here,” she said. “There are no beds, no blankets. And where you sleep is like a long corridor with lots of other women.”
She says she sleeps directly on a concrete floor, using a jumper as a pillow. “There is a ceiling fan but it doesn’t really work and there’s a TV but that also barely works. I only have this one pair of clothes, nothing else to change into and I’m not being allowed my medication for ADHD. The only thing they give are sleeping tablets that properly knock you out.”
Lee, a former TUI flight attendant, said she had been working in Thailand on a 30-day visa and decided to travel to Sri Lanka while waiting for her visa to renew.
“I thought while I was waiting for the visa that I’d come to Sri Lanka. They [the people she believes planted the drugs] were supposed to meet me here. But now I’m here – stuck in this jail.”
A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told The Mirror: “We are supporting a British woman who has been arrested in Sri Lanka and are in contact with her family and the local authorities.”
Lee now faces the very real possibility of years behind bars in harsh conditions while her case is investigated. The outcome remains uncertain, but for now, she says she’s just trying to survive each day in what she calls a “hellhole.”
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