HANDCUFFED to a chair and sweating profusely in a puffer jacket, Alana Moor was terrified she’d never be allowed to go home.
The 24-year-old was due to fly back home to Canada from Panama when she was arrested for drug smuggling in March 2015.
People she’d considered friends had persuaded her to take a suitcase, which contained 11 kilos of cocaine stashed in the lining.
Alana – who was sentenced to six years and nine months for her crime – says she was detained in a stinking prison cell where she was deprived of all basic necessities and preyed on by pervy male prison guards.
So she understands only too well the horror that alleged Brit drug mules Bella Culley, 18, Charlotte May Lee, 21, will be facing in Georgia and Sri Lanka respectively, after they too were caught smuggling the illegal substance.
In an exclusive chat Alana, now 38, tells The Sun: “I was scared for my life as two armed officers put me into the back of a rickety truck.
“I didn’t know where I was going, and I was terrified I was going to be raped or something.
“After a while, they pulled up to this police station with a prison attached.
“Once there I was strapped to a chair in the clothes I had planned to travel home in – winter items.
“They left me there for days, nowhere to go to the loo, wash, or not even allowed to take off a layer. It was humiliating.
“I had to wipe myself with my hand when I went to the loo where I was sat.
“When the guard came to unchain me, he retched at the smell of me.
“Just two weeks before I had been partying with NBA stars.”
Alana claims she was convinced to carry the case by a client she was styling, with ambitions of becoming a fashion designer.
She had been taken under the wing of the woman – who claimed to work for a famous US music star in Toronto.
Alana says the woman, who’ d become a friend, promised to introduce her to celebrities that could become potential clients – on the condition she took a holiday to Panama to pick up a suitcase and bring it back to Canada for the musician.
Alana claims they promised to get her out of Panama safely if anything went wrong because they had top lawyers.
She admits she suspected the suitcase contained something illegal, telling The Sun she thought it was likely drugs, passports or cash.
The friend promised Alana that on her return she’d be introduced to the music mogul and become their stylist.
But her dream was shattered when border officers found the cocaine stash hidden in the suitcase lining.
Alana says she was strip-searched at the airport and made to watch as cops pulled out the packages, which she’d naively thought was insulation.
She was then handed a form in Spanish and told by a translator to cooperate and sign it – but later discovered it confirmed everything in the case was hers.
In the first Panama prison she was detained in, Alana says they sent one meal, a bottle of water and a can of Coke, and claims it was the only food she was given while shackled to the chair.
She was later moved to an all-female prison to await her court date.
Violent offenders
After being handed a six year, nine-month sentence, Alana was moved to an overcrowded female prison in the centre of Panama.
When she arrived at the jail, she says there were 26 women to one cramped room. By the time she left that number was closer to 60.
Many were in prison for murder and other violent offences.
But the majority had been caught with drugs and arrested to show officials were taking an active stance in the war on drugs.
“Prison in Panama is nothing like prison in the US, Canada or the UK,” she says.
“As I was being taken in, the guard said to me, ‘There are laws in this country, but as soon as you cross these bars, the laws don’t apply’.
“I had nothing given to me, just the clothes I was wearing. I had to shower with laundry detergent for the first two weeks.
“I wasn’t given any underwear, no toilet paper or sanitary products. When I got my period I had to free bleed, with blood soaking my clothes as I went about my day.
“Guards and other inmates would tell me I smelt like blood, but there was nothing I could do. No woman should ever be put in that position.”
Thankfully Alana’s parents were allowed to visit and could bring supplies and money for her to buy things she needed – but she says that didn’t always make things better.
“Depending on who was guarding when we were sent outside for work, sometimes we wouldn’t be allowed back in to use the bathroom,” she recalls.
“And when I was on my period, that would mean I used to have to just bleed through whatever sanitary product I was wearing. It was vile.”
Horrifying searches
Alana claims it was common for prison guards to randomly search cells in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning to try to seize phones or drugs that had been brought into the prison.
Often these raids came with humiliating strip searches for the women.
“One morning, 80 balaclava-wearing officers burst in and sprayed us with pepper spray,” she recalls.
“I was in my underwear. They took people out to be strip searched.”
I’d find notes in my stuff from the male guards telling me I was pretty or that they wanted me to be their girlfriend.
Alana Moor
Alana claims she was made to bend over and officers pointed to her tampon string, demanding she remove it.
“I tried to refuse, but they didn’t care,” she says.
“I was then made to sit in the corner of the cell while they searched it for 45 minutes holding this bloody tampon in my hand while bleeding everywhere.
“Six male officers watched me as I left the room and then sat where I was told. It was horrendous and inhumane.”
Indecent propositions
Male officers also brazenly attempted to woo girls they were supposed to be guarding, Alana claims.
“Often after raids I’d find notes in my stuff from the male guards telling me I was pretty or that they wanted me to be their girlfriend,” Alana says.
“They’d leave their phone number because they knew we had mobiles. I was often targeted for being the ‘white gringo’ in the prison.”
Alana says having a mobile phone was commonplace, and hiding them became a lucrative business for inmates.
Everyone was hustling to try to make money. Drugs were dropped of at night by gangs.
Alana Moor
Women would be paid $100 to put them in intimate places to stop them being taken, with Alana claiming some girls fit “up to five” in their private parts.
“Everyone was hustling to try to make money,” she says.
“Drugs were also common. They’d be dropped in at night by gangs who would post them through the tiny letter box windows in the concrete jail.”
Vile conditions
Alana claims it was common for power and water at the prison to fail for days on end, leaving them without showers or facilities to wash.
“We’d be having to put our excrement in bin bags because we couldn’t flush the toilets,” she recalls.
“Then we’d be given a bucket of water to shower with for the days the power was out. This was all while it was extremely hot.
“It just wasn’t sanitary. I’d get sick a lot because the water wasn’t particularly clean. I had to beg and pay to get purified water.
There are just layers and layers of trauma being piled onto you when you’re inside. They treat you like you’re nothing.
Alana Moor
“Often the food we were given was rotten, but you had to eat it in order to survive.
“There are just layers and layers of trauma being piled onto you when you’re inside. They treat you like you’re nothing.”
Alana used her prison time to do every course she could, even teaching herself Spanish.
She also worked out for two hours every day and helped teach other women how to exercise to keep themselves fit.
Warning to Brit drug mules
Now she is a motivational speaker and offers dignity packages to women who find themselves in prison, and helps families advocate for drug mules in similar situations.
Alana is horrified by the growing number of young British women who have recently been caught attempting to smuggle drugs.
Former air hostess Charlotte May Lee is in a Sri Lankan jail accused of smuggling £1.2million of cannabis while pregnant Bella Culley from County Durham was arrested in Georgia for smuggling cannabis from Thailand.
This week it emerged another young mum, Cameron Bradford, is being detained in Germany for allegedly smuggling cannabis in her bags on a flight from Thailand.
Alana says: “I feel so sad for them, but the best thing they can do now is take accountability for their actions, as hard as that is.
“It’s easy to blame other people, but you’ve made this decision. The best and worst thing about prison is time, so use that time wisely.
“The end goal is to come out better than you went in.
“For their parents, support and love your child. They need you now more than ever.
“They know they’ve made a mistake, and getting mad at them won’t make that any better.
“I will be reaching out to their families to offer help and support in any way I can.”
Alana Moor is founder of The Hour Glass Movement, which provides dignity packages to women in prison. She also works as a motivational speaker, life coach and an advocate for women in prison, working with Lenola PR.
Why Brit backpackers are prime targets, Thai cop reveals
Police Lieutenant Colonel Arun Musikim, Deputy Inspector of the Surat Thani province police force, said: “Cases involving British nationals smuggling cannabis have been around for a while.
“There is a lot of cannabis grown on Thailand’s islands in the south because the climate is suitable and it is legal. A lot of gangs are attracted to this.
“There are now various smuggling methods that we have seen. Some carry it themselves, some hire backpackers, and some send it via mail.
“This year, there have been many cases we have intercepted. Most involve British and Malaysian nationals.
“It’s easy for British citizens to travel as they can enter Thailand and return to the UK without needing a visa.
“Most of the smugglers are people hired to carry the cannabis, similar to how tourists might smuggle tax-free goods.
“They’re usually unemployed individuals from the UK. The gangs offer them flights, pocket money and hotel stays, just to come and travel and take a bag back home with them.
“These people often have poor social standing at home and are looking for ways to earn quick money. They find them through friends or on social media.
“Many will go to festivals or parties while they are here, just like they are having a normal trip abroad.
“They are told that it is easy and they will not be caught. Then the amount the organisers can sell the cannabis for in the UK is much higher than it costs in Thailand.
“Police suspect that there are multiple employers and groups receiving the drugs on the other end. The cannabis then enters the UK market.
“We are being vigilant to ensure there are no routes out of the country.”
