Charlotte May Lee, 22, has not been formally charged. She has been transferred from Negombo prison, where disturbances in July left about 30 people dead, according to reports.
A British air stewardess accused of being a “drug mule” has been moved to a different jail in Sri Lanka after deadly riots at the prison where she was held. Charlotte May Lee, 22, was arrested last year after officials allegedly found 46kg of cannabis, said to be worth £1.2m, in her luggage on a flight from Thailand. She has spent 18 months in the overcrowded Negombo prison without a formal charge. She has now been moved to Kuliyappitiya prison in north-west Sri Lanka. She says the drugs were put in her bag without her knowledge, and none of the allegations has been tested in court.
The move
An insider told the Mirror: “Charlotte was traumatised by the riots, a lot of people lost their lives. When the riots happened at Negombo, people were worried for her safety but she survived and has been moved. She is alone in a foreign country, it’s very frightening. But she is now in Kuliyappitiya prison.”
Sources said she is “coping well” after the transfer. She is trying to learn the local language to talk to other inmates, and is “desperate to get home but knows there’s nothing she can do” while she fights her case. Her exact transfer date has not been established. It should be distinguished from the mass transfers immediately after the July disturbances, in which 734 prisoners were moved, according to the Associated Press.
The allegations and her defence
Local police showed images of vacuum-packed drugs which authorities alleged were found in her suitcases. Ms Lee, a part-time beautician, says they were put there in Bangkok without her knowledge. The research notes say she told journalists her packed luggage had been left unattended at a Bangkok hotel, and that she had travelled to Sri Lanka because her Thai visa was close to expiring and she intended to return to Thailand. Sri Lankan Customs described the seizure as its largest of the substance known as kush at the airport. Her account is a defence claim, and a court has not established that anyone else planted the drugs.
If charged and convicted, she faces a maximum of 25 years in prison, according to the source. The source says the sentence would be served at Welikada in Colombo, a maximum security prison. A friend previously told The Sun she had been told she could face 20 to 25 years because of the size of the haul, and that British Embassy staff warned her she was “going nowhere soon”.
The notes say that at a hearing on 30 May 2025 her lawyer, Sampath Perera, said important forensic evidence had not yet been submitted. ITV News reported that the Attorney General’s Department would decide the formal High Court charges once the reports were in. A separate report in October 2025 said a bail application had been submitted but might take months. It has not been verified whether the forensic reports are finished, whether any bail application has been decided, or when her next hearing is.
Conditions at Negombo
Ms Lee has said she sleeps on the concrete floor of a cell holding five women, using her clothes as a pillow. Speaking in court, she said: “I have never been to prison and I’ve never been to Sri Lanka. This heat and just sitting on a concrete floor all of the time.”
She added: “There are people from so many different countries who have been here for two years, two-and-a-half years. And it’s still just waiting and no-one actually knows anything.”
According to Reuters and Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Negombo was designed for 650 prisoners and held 2,417 at the time of the riots, about 3.7 times its capacity. Nationwide, the system was reported to hold about 41,000 inmates in space for around 10,000, and officials said the national anti-drug campaign had contributed to the rise.
The riots
Two days of violence at Negombo in July left more than 100 injured, according to the source. It says two groups of inmates were alleged to have taken guards’ guns and fired on each other. The death toll was reported as 25 on 6 July (Reuters), 26 on 7 July (AP), at least 28 on 9 July (Amnesty International), 29 on 12 July (The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka), and 30 in the latest British reporting. A final reconciled official figure could not be verified.
Amnesty International reported that two inmates died on 8 July after being transferred to other facilities, one to Boossa High Security Prison and one to Agunukolapelessa. Sri Lankan human rights groups have since alleged torture and ill-treatment of prisoners moved after the disturbances. The circumstances of the two deaths were not conclusively established. There is no allegation that Ms Lee was mistreated in her move.
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka opened an investigation on 10 July into the riots, deaths, injuries and alleged mistreatment of transferred inmates. It reported injuries among some transferred prisoners and delays in their medical care, and said it was looking at whether prisoners faced reprisals. It said it had reached no final conclusions. Its investigators were refused unannounced access to Welikada Prison on 7 July and allowed in the next day. Prison officials cited security concerns at a meeting on 14 July, which the commission found inadequate.
Police told Negombo Magistrate’s Court on 14 July that an argument over extra exercise time was among the incidents before the violence, after one inmate demanded more than the permitted 30 minutes. They had taken statements from 136 prison officers, 141 inmates and nine Special Task Force personnel, and were looking at suspected drug dealing and the role of rival prisoner groups. Earlier reports said the violence began after prisoners suspected of informing on a drug operation were attacked. No single trigger was established. A three-member government committee, including a retired Supreme Court judge, was set up to investigate.
On 10 July, Reuters reported that the authorities announced plans to recruit about 1,300 more prison staff, reopen an older prison with space for around 2,000 inmates, convert part of a closed hospital, build on land linked to a naval camp, and consider home detention for some lower-risk remand prisoners. These were proposals and not new accommodation.
