EXCLUSIVE: Confessions of a Former Irish Drug Smuggler

Keany, 49, comes across over the telephone as an ordinary unassuming Irishman, but unlike many others his age, he has a rather unusual tale to tell, one that sounds as if it has been plucked straight from the script of a Hollywood action-adventure movie, full of drugs, gangs, violence and breakout from a Venezuelan prison.

In 2008, by his own admission, Keany was caught in Caracus Simón Bolívar International Airport, trying to smuggle a huge suitcase load of cocaine to Spain. The airport, along with others littered across Latin America, has become a major international epicentre for "drug mules" — as Keany referred to himself during his chat with Sputnik — looking to shift illegal substances — nearly always cocaine — for cartels in exchange for handsome payout. The potential cost if captured by the Venezuelan authorities however is a steep one: at least eight years in prison.

"I got stopped for six kilos, but it's the same sentence for half a kilo, one kilo or three hundred kilos — eight years. It's also the same sentence for killing one person or killing eight people — eight years," Keany nonchalantly explains.

When Sputnik asked Keany how authorities realised he was in possession of such a huge load of drugs, he explains, "I got caught going through Caracus international airport, I got caught with six kilos of cocaine in my suitcase. But whoever had packed the case done a real bodge job on it, because they'd put all the cocaine in the lining of the suitcase but they took the screws off the handle and glued it in. There hadn't been enough time for the glue to set, and one of the baggage handlers just pulled it straight off, so straight away he got suspicious."

He then went on to explain the moment when his fears were confirmed, and airport security knew he was in possession of drugs: "they fired these three little darts into the suitcase and you could see the white powder on the tip of the dart, and my name tag was on the case, so there was no denying it."

Los Teques

By this point, Mr Keany's ordeal had only just begun, after being interrogated in the airport by authorities, he was then taken to a place called the ‘Drug Squad HQ.' It was here that Keany would begin to realise just how much trouble he was in.

"I was handcuffed to a steel staircase for about four days. Obviously while in there, I was raped and abused."

Soon after, he was taken to a place that was referred to as a ‘police station,' where he spent about 2 to 3 weeks under harsh questioning.

"It was called a police station, like you'd have in England or wherever, but it was more like a dungeon. There were loads of people behind bars, about 40 to a cell, they all had knives, guns and were dealing drugs, not like the kind of police station you'd find in London," he said.

Following that, Keany was transferred to one of the most notoriously violent and corrupt prisons on earth, ‘Los Teques,' which he has referred to elsewhere as a "human zoo" where "people are killed on a regular basis" and where there is "a lot of illness."

The prison is known for being controlled primarily by the prisoners, rather than the guards. Inmates are, according to reports and Keany's testimony, mostly armed to the teeth with machine guns. Gang battles, massacres, and gruesome acts of violence such as beheadings and disembowelment are reported to have taken place within its walls.

"It [Los Teques] was the same as the ‘police station,' but just on massive scale," Keany explains.

"There was an army base that surrounded the prison, including great big gun turrets, big towers with machine guns, it was built on top of a mountain and the surrounding concrete was about 20 feet thick, that's why no one ever escaped from Los Teques. People tried digging tunnels but there was no end to the concrete. It was a pretty horrifying place that was originally built for 400 inmates and when I left there were about 2,500. You didn't get bedding or anything like that, unless you had money on you, then you could buy a blanket or a mattress or something like that. So I slept on a bit of cardboard with a towel over me that I had for about, jeez, the first week."

Other than a few other Europeans who had also fallen foul of the Venezuelan government and found themselves in Los Teques, Keany was almost entirely alone, in an ultra-violent prison, in an unknown land. 

Gang Culture 

Perhaps the most serious existential threat faced by Keany throughout his time in Los Teques was the persistent gang violence.

"Gang culture ruled. The Venezuelans were the kingpins," he remembers.

"You couldn't raise your hand against anyone in there. There were eight different wings to the prison, and if you wanted to have a fight with someone you'd have to go and ask the boss of your wing if you could do it. The boss would also have his own foot soldiers within the prison, it was like the Mafia. They all had big knives, hand grenades and machine guns."

Information about Los Teques prison is very hard to get hold of, perhaps because the institution resembles something akin to an underground crime world rather than a penal institution. Yet, prisons across South America are known for their lack, or indeed absence, of law and order.

"The guards would only walk around with batons, they didn't even have guns. If they didn't do as they were told [by the prisoners] they would be left outside in the cemetery. They'd be killed," Keany said.

Some of the worst violence that he experienced occurred just a few days after arriving in Los Teques. Much of it sounds like something one would expect to hear about in tales of battlefield warfare rather than from a stint in prison.

"Day one, I'd only been there a couple of hours and there was a massive explosion. It was one of the guys who was a sort of lookout for a gang in the hallway of the prison wing. Now this guy obviously had a grenade or something on his belt, something happened and he blew himself to pieces. When we [the new inmates] walked down for the first time to the canteen — the food was basically just rice and beans — there was blood everywhere. They'd taken the body parts away in a wheelbarrow, but they didn't clean up all the blood, so we had to just walk through it on the way to our food."

In one of the most harrowing incidents, Mr Keany watched a fellow inmate and gang member shoot his own wife in the face during visiting hours.

"This guy shot his wife straight through the head because she hadn't visited him. There were three visits per week. During those visits, the inmates could have sex with their wives, it was crazy. The families would bring in big cooked meals for their relatives serving time, they'd sometimes smuggle in drugs and that kinda thing. There were people sitting around writing, reading books, doing whatever. But this one guy was high out of his head on crack cocaine and she [his wife] hadn't visited him and he got it into his head that she was cheating on him. We were standing around in the canteen then suddenly he came down the stairs, gun-in-hand, held it up to her [his wife] as she was walking in with her mother, and blew her fu**ing head off, then walked back up the stairs followed by the guards."

The Escape

After a prolonged period of having money smuggled into the prison, Keany was able to pay a bribe for parol and secure an early release after serving two years of his eight year sentence. 

"I got friendly with a guy called Yakamol, who was teaching me Spanish and I was teaching him English. He was kind of Mafia. I was able to use his lawyer. Basically, in Los Teques, you could pay 20 wrong people and your money would go down the drain. But if you paid a little amount of money to the right people, you could get your papers stamped for early release."

Yet, an early release simply meant that Keany would be expected to see out the rest of his sentence in another, perhaps slightly less dangerous, prison.

"That meant you were paroled to go and live in another prison for the remainder of your sentence, which for me was five years. So, when I got out, I was given 24 hours ‘grace,' which meant that I could go and have a few beers and then go to the new prison. But before you go to that prison you had to go to court to get the terms of your parole signed by a judge."

It was at this point that the luck of the Irish kicked in, as the judge who was supposed to sign Keany's papers was absent from the court house, giving him a chance to make a run for it.

"When I arrived at the court house on a Friday morning after my Thursday evening release, there was a court attendant there saying that the judge isn't here today, she's not well, come back on Monday. At that moment, that was it, I planned my escape over the border into Colombia, did a little dance, and the rest is history."

An armed border guard took a bribe to help Keany escape into Colombia.

"It was a simple as that. There was no big gun fight or anything like that, I just walked across."

From Colombia, Keany was able to secure a temporary passport through the Irish Consulate on the capital, Bogota. In short time, he boarded a plane to leave the country.

"That was it, I was able to jump on the plane, keep my head down and head home."

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