Markéta Klimtová: Nine Years in a Sri Lankan Prison for Five Kilograms of Cocaine in a Suitcase
Czech national Markéta Klimtová spent nine years imprisoned in Sri Lanka after being detained with five kilograms of cocaine. She now speaks openly about her story in a podcast.
Cocaine in Children's Books: Markéta on Detention at Sri Lankan Airport
Blesk.cz brings details from the testimony of Markéta Klimtová, who landed at Colombo airport on 14 June 2015 with five kilograms of cocaine hidden in children's books in her suitcase. In a country where possession of drugs carries the death penalty, she ended up spending nine years behind bars. She now speaks about her detention in the podcast Butterfly Behind Bars, created in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Markéta OddFish Nešlehová.
Markéta was drawn into drug smuggling by a man with whom she planned a shared future. A Nigerian named Viktor, as she describes him, saw her only as a courier from the start. She discovered too late that he wanted to turn her into a drug smuggler through whom he could make money.
The cocaine was wrapped in children's books in the suitcase so it would pass through airport security unnoticed. While standing in the queue at passport control, directly beneath a sign warning of the death penalty for drug possession, a uniformed man approached her and asked her to show the contents of her suitcase.
"They opened my suitcase and the cocaine was scattered inside. The corner of the book was apparently badly wrapped and the cocaine spilled into the suitcase. When I saw it, my throat dried up and I knew I couldn't come up with an excuse," Markéta describes. She decided to tell the truth in every detail. "I had told so many lies about myself. I lied to my parents, to my friends, to myself… I was a terrible liar," she adds.
She cooperated with investigators, but when they offered her the possibility of contacting her family, she refused. "The shame was such that I couldn't tell my mother. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror for about half a year. I couldn't see my own face," she says. Only one thought ran through her head: whether she would be hanged or shot. She only learnt later that whilst the death penalty is imposed in Sri Lanka, it is not carried out. She waited for the sentence in detention for three years, after which three life sentences were imposed on her.
After a night at the airport, Markéta was taken to a police station. She asked the investigator for permission to keep a diary. "I didn't want to write it like an ordinary diary. I was talking to my mother there, I wanted to somehow explain it to her. I assumed I would never get out of there," she explains.
After several days, the female investigators persuaded her to contact her family as soon as possible. She decided to call her brother. He initially thought she was joking with him. "I wasn't able to call my mother, my brother had to tell her. I threw it at him like that," Markéta admits.
At the investigators' request, she also contacted Viktor. "He asked me what I dared to do. Why did I tell him I was going to a hotel when I was detained. He asked me why I didn't tell him straight away. If I had told him straight away, he would have had time to pack and disappear, this way the investigators had time to find out something about him," she describes how the conversation went. The investigators then asked her to get Viktor to come. "He cursed at me, saying I was an idiot, that they would hang us both. I told him he was a liar, that I wanted nothing from him and that I would see him in hell. That was the end of it for me," she describes.
Markéta served a total of nine years in Sri Lanka. At that time, the Czech Republic had not concluded a prisoner extradition treaty with Sri Lanka, so the transfer to a Czech prison was only arranged last year. In February this year, she was conditionally released. "When I got home and saw my parents for the first time. At that moment I wanted to smash my head against the wall. I had hurt my parents, who loved me, terribly, and at the time I didn't know how much," she describes the first meeting with her family after her return.
About her stay in a Sri Lankan prison and the transformation she went through behind bars, Markéta speaks in the podcast Butterfly Behind Bars from Active Radio production. New episodes are released every Monday on YouTube and other platforms.
The case is now resonating in the context of current news brought by Czech Radio and confirmed by the Foreign Ministry: at the end of September, authorities in Cambodia detained two Czech nationals—a man and a woman—at Phnom Penh international airport with six kilograms of cocaine in a suitcase.
Source: iROZHLAS.cz