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A British woman has been arrested in Sri Lanka on suspicion of smuggling 46kg of a deadly new synthetic drug into Sri Lanka.
Charlotte May Lee, 21, was detained after allegedly carrying suitcases packed full of kush through Colombo’s Bandaranaike Airport this month.
Officials said the discovery was the airport’slargest ever seizure of the drug, which is most commonly used in west Africa and reportedly made with human bones. The stash has a reported street value of £1.5 million ($3.3m).
Lee, a former flight attendant from south London, has denied the accusations and claimed that the drugs were planted there without her knowledge. She could face up to 25 years in prison if found guilty.
Her lawyers said she is being held in a prison in the city of Negombo, north of the capital, where she said she was facing hard conditions and sleeping on a concrete floor.
A legal representative told the BBC that his team was visiting her daily in the prison to ensure her wellbeing and offer support. She is reportedly in contact with her family.
British woman Charlotte May Lee, 21, denies smuggling 46kg of a deadly new synthetic drug into Sri Lanka. Photo / @charlottemaylee / Instagram
Lee had been in Bangkok and travelled to Sri Lanka because her visa was due to expire.
She claimed that she packed her bag the night before her flight and that someone “must have planted it [the drugs] then”.
She told the MailOnline “I know who did it”, but did not elaborate. She added that she did not check her luggage before boarding the flight to Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.
She said: “I had never seen them [the drugs] 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.”
A senior customs officer in Sri Lanka told the BBC that there had been a large increase in drugs being smuggled into Sri Lanka via Bangkok recently, which they said was a “real nuisance”.
The officer added: “Another passenger who had left Bangkok’s airport, almost at the same time, was arrested in another country. We arrested this lady [Lee] based on profiling.”
Kush, a relatively new synthetic narcotic, is most commonly used in west Africa and is estimated to kill around a dozen people a week in Sierra Leone.
The drug, typically consumed by men between the ages of 18 to 25, causes individuals to fall asleep while walking, collapse unexpectedly, hit their heads on hard surfaces and wander into moving traffic.
State of emergency declared
It has been reported that one of the drug’s many ingredients is human bones and that security has been tightened in graveyards in Sierra Leone to stop people digging up skeletons.
The country’s president declared a state of emergency over abuse of the substance in 2024.
Groups of mostly young men sitting on street corners with limbs swollen by kush abuse is a common sight in the former British colony.
Julius Maada Bio, Sierra Leone’s President, said the drug posed an “existential crisis” and called it a “death trap”.
It is thought that Lee left Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport days after the departure of another British woman from the same airport who was recently detained on drug charges in Georgia.
Bella Culley, 18, from Billingham, County Durham, allegedly smuggled 12kg of marijuana and 2kg of hashish into the Caucasus country.
Investigations are under way as to where the narcotics, found in her travel bag, came from. Culley could face up to 20 years in prison or a life sentence if found guilty.
