I’ve always loved The National Geographic magazine. When Dad died I continued his subscription for a long time after. I finally gave up on it when I realized that I wasn’t actually reading the stories so much as looking at the pictures and then finally I wasn’t even looking at the pictures. I hardly had time to even flip through it, much less read it.
Apparently last month was a free preview of the National Geographic Channel on Dish Network. I always discover the free preview of the awesome channels at the total end of it all. I saw this show listed and at first I thought it was a one time special, but then I noticed on the listing that it’s actually an entire SERIES. It’s called Locked Up Abroad. Apparently there are enough stories of foreigners locked up in crazy places that there is a whole series about it. According to Wikipedia this started as a British series called Banged Up Abroad back in 2006. So far they’ve had 6 series (aka-seasons) plus a series called Kidnapped Abroad. The idea that this happens so often it could fill a several season show frightens me.
The episode I caught is about Sarah Jackson, a woman from England who was living a big party lifestyle of drugs, etc and found herself three thousand pounds in debt to a loan shark. In order to pay off her debt he gives her the only option of going to Peru and smuggling “a few kilos” of cocaine back into the country. The catch is, he wants her to take a friend. It looks less suspicious if you’re not traveling alone when you smuggle. She gets a friend, Simon Burke, to go with her. She tells him it’s just a holiday to check out Machu Pichu and all the beauty therein. He asks about money, she tells him she got money from her Grandmother so it’s all good.
As the departure date looms, Sarah has second thoughts and tries to get out of it by telling the loan shark she can’t find her passport. No problem, he has one, but the picture looks NOTHING like her, well, OK the girl in the picture also has short hair, but it’s not the right color… But it seems it’s very easy to get out of the UK with a passport that looks nothing like you, and it’s really easy to get into Peru as well. The only problem they had was the airline losing Simon’s luggage. She and Simon have a lovely time in Peru seeing the sites. She lets nothing slip to Simon about why they are really there.
She ditches Simon for an afternoon to get the goods that are already concealed in a suitcase. All she has to do is pack it and bring it back to the UK. Simon is totally clueless about what’s going on. They fly from the Machu Pichu area to Lima where they will switch planes back to the UK. All is well when they land in Lima. They claim the bags and then head to check in for the next leg of the flight. Sarah doesn’t want Simon around when she checks the bag in because she’s trying to keep him out of it. She tells him to go check on his lost bag from the beginning of their trip.
She checks in and everything seems totally OK, until a worker questions her passport, then her luggage is X-rayed and that’s not going well either. But right when she thinks she’s finally made it, they pull her aside and have her open her luggage. They cut into the bag and find the drugs. She’s brought back into a holding area and they discover she’s not traveling alone. The police go out into the airport to find Simon. These two are a man and woman traveling together, obviously they’re working together. They are interrogated. The police find 10kg of cocaine in the suitcase. They find Sarah’s real passport and a wig.
This all went down in 2007. Both Simon and Sarah were put in jail since Peru’s justice system is nothing like the US or the UK. After 18 days together in some sort of holding cell they are sent to separate prisons. The whole time Sarah is trying to tell anyone who will listen that Simon is innocent. However, no one in the Peruvian justice system cares if your innocent or how long it takes to prove that you are.
Sarah, the guilty party, is sent to what looks like a luxury resort. Simon, the innocent one, is sent to hell. The disgusting filth of the men’s prison in Peru where he is stuck for 10 months, is enough to make you lose all faith in humanity. Once the Peruvian officials accept Sarah’s guilty plea they let Simon leave prison, but he can’t leave the country. He has to wait until Sarah is sentenced before he can go home. Again this could take forever because they don’t care about due process or speedy trial in Peru. Now he’s living in equally squalid conditions.
I searched a bit online to try to learn more, I found the blog of Adam Sweet. He saw the Banged Up Abroad episode when it first aired on Channel 5 in the UK. Simon was staying in the spare room of a Peruvian family. He was trapped there for over 2 years. It cost his family twenty thousand pounds because Simon had no means to earn an income while stranded in Peru pending the court case and the prosecution’s appeal of an earlier acquittal. Simon was finally allowed to get home in October of 2009. If I remember correctly (as no online sources say) Sarah was sentenced to 7 years in prison. From what Adam Sweet says on his blog, there wasn’t a lot of mainstream press coverage about Simon and what was happening to him. His family and friends started a few Facebook groups to help raise awareness and pressure the British government into doing something. They also took donations for his living expenses. This poor guy’s life was ruined, and ruined by a friend.
So… let this be a warning to you, just because you’re innocent that doesn’t mean you wont get fucked over in another country. Peru’s law is lock you up and sort it all out later, even if that takes years. If going to Peru, make sure you’re a woman because the women’s prison is so much nicer. But also, don’t get involved in drug smuggling. You WILL get caught and it WILL be nasty, because you’ll get caught in a foreign country. I think I may continue to remain holed up in my cave.
