An Icelandic mother-of-five was arrested for attempting to smuggle two kilos of cocaine from Peru and is currently in custody in Lima. Her brother suspects she was working as a drug mule for a man in Norway who she met over the internet.
“She was a drug mule, definitely. She doesn’t have enough money to travel abroad, let alone to buy drugs, being a cashier at Krónan [supermarket]. I suspect a man in Norway who she was mixed up with but I don’t know who he is,” the woman’s brother, Thröstur Sveinsson, told pressan.is.
According to Fréttabladid, the woman traveled to Norway last month before embarking on a journey to South America, where she traveled to Argentina, Chile and Peru.
Peruvian newspaper Ojo reported that she was on her way back to Norway when she was arrested at the international airport in Lima.
“We haven’t heard about her circumstances. We get more thorough information from journalists than the Foreign Ministry. Her children are devastated,” said Sveinsson.
The Icelandic Ministry for Foreign Affairs is working on securing that the captive’s rights are being respected, that a lawyer will be appointed to represent her case, that the prison facilities are acceptable and that she will be allowed to contact her family in Iceland.
Sveinsson said his sister has a clean record in Iceland but that she had once gotten into trouble in the US. “It was in connection with drugs.”
