How Cassandra Sainsbury’s ticket reportedly got her caught
THE father of a young Australian arrested on drugs charges in Colombia says he does not believe his daughter is guilty.
THE father of accused Aussie drug smuggler Cassandra Sainsbury has broken his silence, three weeks after his daughter landed in a Colombian prison.
Stuart Sainsbury told Nine News he is standing by the 22-year-old because “a father’s love is unconditional and never stops, regardless of what happens”.
He said he does not believe she is “a drug mule”.
“I don’t believe she was a drug mule, she’s just my kid. What parent thinks their kid is a drug mule? I just love her and I can’t change what’s happened. I just have to be here when she comes home.”
Earlier, he told reporters “I don’t want to be tied up in all this,” the Mail Online reported.
“Listen, whatever is going on has nothing to do with me, and I have nothing to say about it,” he said from his home in Yorketown, South Australia.
“You can ring my lawyer if you don’t understand me. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
He told the Adelaide Advertiser that his “love doesn’t change no matter what (your children) do” and said no Australian officials had been in touch with him.
The comments follow revelations that Cassie was caught because the US Drug Enforcement Agency alerted Colombian authorities to their suspicions about her plane ticket, reports suggest.
Ms Sainsbury, 22, was arrested at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota on April 12 after a tip-off about the 5.8kg of cocaine allegedly hidden inside what she thought were 18 boxes of headphones in her suitcase.
The South Australian is now being held in a women’s jail in Colombia and is reportedly struggling to adjust to her new life inside prison.
An American woman who walked free from El Buen Pastor prison on Tuesday after serving a 17 month sentence, told Newscorp she had helped support Cassie, along with another woman inside the jail.
“Because she is so young there are a lot of people trying to take advantage of her,” said the woman, who did not wish to be named.
“Not only that, when she was at the police station they took most of her stuff — all of her clothes, her money.”
The woman said Cassie was receiving some support from Australian consular staff but was told she would only receive a visit every few months.
“She’s just wearing a sweater and pants and a top, the same ones. I offered her something but she said no thank you.”
Meanwhile it has emerged that Ms Sainsbury may have been arrested after a tip-off from US authorities.
“We found her because of an alert from the DEA (US Drug Enforcement Agency),” Bogota airport’s narcotics chief, Commander Rodrigo Soler, told News Corp Australia Network.
He said she had cleared security, checked her bag and was minutes away from boarding her flight when the alert came up.
“The alert said check this person so we pulled her aside and we searched her luggage and we arrested her. We asked ‘is this your bag, did you pack this?’. She said ‘yes’.”
Soler told The Australian Ms Sainsbury’s ticket, which was bought at the last minute by an unknown party in Hong Kong for a trip from Australia to Bogota via London, was one of several red flags that caused North American agencies to alert Colombian police.
The Adelaide woman’s family insists she is innocent and was set up by a Colombian man she met after arriving in the South American country on April 3 during a working holiday.
They say she bought the headphones from him to give as gifts to family and friends at her upcoming wedding.
An expert on the South American drug trade says there was no way the former fitness trainer would have the connections to sell almost $2 million worth of cocaine, and someone must have been waiting to receive it in Australia.
Rusty Young, wrote the book Marching Powder and is about to release a book Colombiano after living in Colombia for eight years. He said the South Australian woman’s story didn’t add up.
“Her version of events is not consistent with the way drug rings operate,” Mr Young told news.com.au yesterday.
“If you were planting $1 million worth of drugs in someone’s baggage, how were you intending to recover the drugs back in Australia?”
Ms Sainsbury’s sister Khala posted on a fundraising page that the 22-year-old was detained for drug trafficking at the airport in Bogota “waiting to depart back to Australia”. But it’s since been reported that Cassie may have intended to continue on her working holiday to make presentations in London, France and Hong Kong.
Her sister said she was not due back in Australia until Easter Saturday, April 15.
It’s unclear where the drugs were ultimately headed but Mr Young believes if they were being shipped to Australia, someone would have been waiting for them to come in.
“There’s no way a 22-year-old could have the connections to distribute and sell almost 6kg of cocaine,” he said.
“There must have been someone in Australia to receive those drugs.”
Mr Young also dismissed fears that Ms Sainsbury could be targeted by cartels while imprisoned in Colombia.
“That’s absolute nonsense,” he said. “Cartels don’t run drug mules through airports, they run tonnes of cocaine. There’s no professional Colombian organisation behind this.”
Despite concerns about Ms Sainsbury’s safety, Mr Young said he thought she would be physically safe in the overcrowded El Buen Pastor women’s jail.
“They would have put her in the foreign section with foreign inmates,” he said.
Australian diplomatic staff have also reportedly delivered her a mattress and blanket to use in her cell.
Mr Young said he also thought Ms Sainsbury would get a fair trial in Colombia, although justice would be slow.
Even if she plead guilty, Mr Young said it would probably still take six to nine months for her to go through the justice system. A trial would probably take three years just to reach a verdict and would cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Mr Young said his thoughts were with Ms Sainsbury and her family.
“They are in for a long and difficult journey,” he said.
Ms Sainsbury’s family has previously said the 22-year-old travelled to Colombia on April 3 for a working holiday. It’s unclear what visa she was travelling on and what job she was doing overseas.
There is no working holiday maker visa arrangement between Australia and Colombia, and working visas require Australians to prove they have a skill set Colombians don’t possess.
“The most common work visa would be for English teachers,” Mr Young said.
But Australians can enter Colombia for 90 days as a visitor without a visa.
It has also emerged that Ms Sainsbury was reportedly arrested following a tip-off from international drug agencies and her travel plans had raised suspicions, anti narco trafficking control, Colonel Rodrigo Soler, told The Australian.
The South Australian was arrested minutes before she was due to fly back to Australia from El Dorado International Airport in Bogota.
Colombian police have released a photo of the young Aussie in handcuffs standing in front of a table lined with 18 packages, which Ms Sainsbury thought were headphones she bought as wedding gifts and presents for her friends and family.
Jorge Mendoza, the ports and airports director for Colombia’s anti-narcotic police, says he doubted Ms Sainsbury didn’t know the drugs were hidden inside the packages.
“She could possibly be a drug mule,” Mendoza told ABC radio through an interpreter on Tuesday.
“In going through security we found she had 18 packets inside her luggage, which even before opening it we found covered in plastic.
“Her explanation is not credible. Everyone we catch says they didn’t know it was in their luggage.”
Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Triana, head of the anti-narcotics police at Bogota’s international airport was also sceptical about the Australian’s innocence.
He said Ms Sainsbury’s claims that she was deceived are probably untrue and in any case don’t excuse her actions.
“Everyone who is caught says exactly the same thing,” said Lt Colonel Triana, who added that many foreigners are lured by false promises of fast fortunes.”
As tourism to Colombia has boomed over the past decade, the country’s drug cartels are increasingly recruiting foreigners to smuggle cocaine out of the country. Police have arrested 19 foreign drug mules this year alone, Lt Colonel Triana said.
The Adelaide woman’s family insists she is innocent and was set up by a Colombian man she met after arriving in the South American country on April 3 during a working holiday.
But public comments made by her family about her case may have unwittingly put the 22-year-old in danger, The Australian has reported.
Senior Australian lawyers familiar with the case told the paper that if the cartels found out what Ms Sainsbury’s mother had been saying, she could be in danger inside the notorious El Buen Pastor jail where she is being held.
El Buen Pastor is Bogota’s biggest women’s prison, and inmates live in overcrowded and filthy conditions alongside violent criminals, their children and babies and corrupt guards who steal food brought to prisoners by their families.
On Monday, Ms Sainsbury’s mother Lisa Evans told KIIS that her daughter was facing a potential jail sentence of between 18 to 25 years, but if she pleaded guilty this would be reduced.
She said the minimum sentence was six years but this could be reduced to four if Ms Sainsbury provided information about the man who gave her the drugs.
Ms Evans said Cassie had trusted the man who gave her the drugs, and he had been acting as her translator in Colombia.
“He had been helping her all week, taking her around and showing her places, and just being a nice guy,” Ms Evans said.
It is understood lawyers in Australia have now advised the family not to make any further public comments and to take down an online fundraising campaign on FundRazr.
The campaign has raised more than $4000 for Ms Sainsbury and remains active, although many of the posts express scepticism about Cassie’s story.
Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine and its police among the best-trained to detect and stop drug smuggling thanks in part to billions of dollars in US anti-narcotics aid that has strengthened law enforcement.
— With AP/AAP
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