Lenzie drugs mule Melissa Reid may be home soon

The 21-year-old was jailed for cocaine smuggling in September 2013. She has been seeking to serve the remainder of her six-year sentence in the UK.

Reid and Michaella McCollum from Northern Ireland were caught with £1.5 million worth of drugs at Lima airport.

Scottish ministers confirmed last year that first offender Reid would be accepted into the prison system and were waiting for the Peruvian authorities to rubber-stamp approval.

Reid, from Lenzie, near Glasgow, was given the good news during a prison visit from her parents Billy and Debbie Reid at the weekend.

Officers from the Scottish Prison Service are ready to travel to Peru to collect Reid, although a SPS spokeswoman said they had not yet received “formal notification.”

He added: “When the application has been approved, the necessary measures will be put in place for the transfer.”

Reid and McCollum were working in Ibiza when they claim they were forced to board a flight to Peru with 24lb of cocaine in food packets hidden inside their luggage.

They pleaded guilty to drug smuggling, each receiving a jail term of six years and eight months.

The repatriation of McCollum to Northern Ireland was approved by Stormont’s justice minister in January this year but, like Reid, she remains in jail in Lima for now.

The pair had previously been held at Virgen de Fatima prison but were later moved to the Ancon 2 jail, where conditions are said to be cramped, with poor sanitation and toilet facilities.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said: “We continue to provide consular assistance. For reasons of consular confidentiality we cannot go into further details.”

More than 700 British nationals were arrested for drug-related crimes in 2013-2014, according to the Foreign Office.