Sri Lanka: UK woman arrested for deadly drug smuggling

The arrested British woman was identified as 21-year-old Charlotte May Lee.

The woman hails from South London.

She has claimed the drugs were planted in her luggage.

Lee is being held in a prison north of the south Asian country's capital, Colombo, and is contact with her family, her lawyer told the BBC.

A senior officer in the Sri Lanka Customs Narcotics Control Unit told the British media that the discovery, at Colombo's Bandaranaike Airport, was the largest kush seizure in the airport's history.

Her legal representative, Sampath Perera, told the BBC his team was visiting her daily in prison in the city of Negombo, to provide support and monitor her wellbeing.

She Arrived From Thailand

She was reportedly in Thailand before heading to Sri Lanka.

According to reports, she planned to visit Colombo as her visa was expiring.

Ms Lee was said to have flown from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport around the same time as another British woman, Bella Culley, 18, from Billingham, County Durham, who is being held in Georgia on suspicion of drug offences, reported BBC.

A senior customs officer in Sri Lanka told the BBC: "Another passenger who had left Bangkok airport, almost at the same time, was arrested in another country. We arrested this lady [Ms Lee] based on profiling."

Massive Increase In Drugs Coming From Bangkok

He said there had been a massive increase in drugs coming via Bangkok into Sri Lanka.

Kush Drugs

According to Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) website,  the synthetic drug known as ‘kush’ has likely killed thousands of people in West Africa.

Kush emerged in Sierra Leone, but quickly spread across countries in the subregion, including Liberia, Guinea, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, with devastating effects.

By April 2024, the health impacts of kush, a synthetic drug containing nitazenes, opioids as – or more – powerful than fentanyl, as well as synthetic cannabinoids, were so acute that the presidents of Sierra Leone and Liberia had declared national emergencies over drug use – an unprecedented step, the website said.