Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid arrested at airport for drug trafficking

COCAINE smugglers Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid could spend six months answering questions about their drug plot.

Prosecutors say the two women caught trying to smuggle £1.5 milliom worth of cocaine out of Peru could be quizzed until next April being by prosecutors and a judge if their guilty pleas are not accepted.

McCollum Connolly, of Dungannon, County Tyrone, and Melissa Reid, of Lenzie, near Glasgow, last week admitted smuggling drugs.

However, police don’t believe their stories that they were forced at gunpoint by a Colombian drug gang to take the drugs in their luggage back to Spain.

Prosecutor Juan Mendoza said the women’s confessions had not yet satisfied prosecutors.

He was speaking after the women appeared before a judge on Tuesday for a lenghty questioning session.

It was the second time the women, both 20, have appeared before a judge at a closed hearing in Lima.

Last week the pair, who face up to 15 years in prison, hoped their admission of guilt would bring their sentences down to six years and eight months.

But prosecutors said they needed to provide more information to get reduced sentences.

Mr Mendoza would not discuss whether the women had explained to them how they got the cocaine or who it was from.

But he suggested the women’s confessions had not yet satisfied prosecutors.

McCollum and Reid were caught with the drugs – said to be worth £1.5m – inside food packets at Lima airport in August, and said they were forced into carrying them.

The women had reportedly told the Peruvian authorities they were working in Ibiza and did not meet before they were both kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to travel to Majorca and then Peru.