Cassie Sainsbury’s much anticipated 60 Minutes interview aired last night and the accused drug smuggler has a new defence.
The Adelaide-native is now claiming she thought she would be carrying document as a legitimate international courier – not drugs.
Speaking from the Colombian women’s prison where she’s been imprisoned for the last five months, Sainsbury claimed she accepted a courier job to earn $10,000 and was then flown to Colombia by her employers.
WATCH: Cassie’s first interview.
However, when she arrived, she says a man named Angelo informed her she would actually be carrying drugs instead of documents.
“I started saying, ‘I don’t want any part of this’ because I didn’t come here to do anything illegal, I didn’t come here to risk my life,” she said.
Sainsbury says that Angelo then said he would kill her family, supporting his threats with video surveillance of her mother, sister and fiancé in Adelaide.
He sent the videos over encrypted service WhatsApp, and then started to pack her suitcase.
“I didn’t know exactly what was in … I didn’t know it was headphones. I didn’t know. I wasn’t allowed to look. I wasn’t allowed to touch. It was packed in my suitcase.
“It was locked and that was it.”
The WhatsApp messages seem to be the key to Sainbury’s defence, but there’s one problem – she can’t remember the password to her phone.
“I haven’t used it for nearly six months, I’m not going to remember a pattern.”
“I’ve been trying to remember it,” she added.
This version of events comes after the 22-year-old initially claimed she didn’t know the drugs were there, that she had been in the country while working for her uncle’s cleaning business and her family insisting she had been set up.
She admitted that the changing stories were suspicious, telling 60 Minutes: “I understand why it comes across as, she’s making up a story to protect herself.”
The interview comes just a month after a judge rejected Cassie’s plea deal with Colombian prosecutors over drug smuggling charges.
Cassie agreed to reveal the identities of others in the drug ring to receive a lighter sentence of six years but today, the plea deal was officially rejected and she could be looking at 20-30 years in Colombian prison if she’s found guilty.
Although prosecutors will present brief evidence against her on Tuesday, the actual trial won’t being for six months.
