Drug smuggler Michaella McCollum has graduated from university ten years after her prison conviction.
McCollum and Melissa Reid were caught with 11 kilos of cocaine in their luggage at Lima Airport in Peru in 2013 as they attempted to board a flight to Spain.
Both were jailed in the notoriously tough Ancon 2 prison in South America but were granted early release in 2016.
Mother-of-two McCollum, 29, has now shared pictures online of her picking up her diploma after completing a BBA course in Business Management, Marketing and Related Support Services at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland.
The former prison convict can be seen posing in a black graduation cap and gown alongside her twin sons Rio and Rafael.
McCollum had been living in Ibiza before her drugs run, where she worked as a waitress.
But after beginning to serve up drugs alongside drinks, she said she met a man named “Davey” who asked her to do "a run" for him from Ibiza to Barcelona.
However, “Davey” changed the destination to Peru, which McCollum thought was just another part of Spain.
She explained in a media interview: “When they mentioned Peru, initially I was going to Barcelona and then Majorca.
“So Peru was mentioned and because I had went to two different places in Spain ... now I look back, how stupid, who doesn’t know where Peru is?
“Obviously at that time, I had no idea. I look back and I’m like ‘how can you not know where that place is?’”
Speaking in a 2021 BBC documentary called High: Confessions Of An Ibiza Drug Mule, McCollum said the idea of spending time in Ancon 2 women’s prison made her “want to do something stupid”.
“The whole place was just so toxic, everything about it was toxic, the majority of the people were toxic,” she said.
“The first thing I noticed about Ancon was it was just so manic and crazy and noisy, it sounded like a zoo.
“There was this woman... she had caught her husband having an affair and she had killed their child, and then she fed it to her husband in a stew.
“I’ve never been so scared and I was obviously really intimidated because we were foreign... One of the things I noticed about Ancon quite quickly was they were just so active sexually.
“I’d never actually seen people be so open about their sexuality, I was shocked that they were doing that kind of thing quite openly. Nobody was really making that big of an issue... but I felt uncomfortable that was happening so close to me.”
McCollum also spoke about calling her mother to tell her where she was. ‘I’m like: “How am I going to tell her where I am?” I said: “I’m in Peru, I’m in jail,” and she was like: “What, what?” and then the phone call ended, I didn’t get to tell her the situation.’
Her brother later told her that her mother had passed out during the phonecall.
