DRUG MULES

He thought it was worth the risk. After a week in the sun, a few hours
worth of work would have netted him more than $12,000. He even recruited a
friend to pack-mule the drugs back to Canada. It would be good pay for a
labourer with a child on the way.

Now, after being caught with 1,500 grams of cocaine strapped to his torso
on a return flight from Jamaica to Toronto - his friend also nabbed - the
price seems much higher than he had bargained for. The greed and final cost
somehow don't seem to balance, as he prepares for Christmas away from his
family, including a newborn son, inside a Jamaican cell.

Right now he's pushing a plastic bag containing his feces through the iron
bars. Eating supper from a bucket. And trying to figure out how he'll make
this up to his family back in Canada.

If you are going to be jailed for a serious offence outside of Canada -
other than in the U.S. - it's most likely you're trying to transport or
deal in drugs.

The man behind bars is one of about 20 Canadians being held in Jamaica, a
country which has no treaty with Canada to swap prisoners.

Lied To His Wife

To give you any specific details on his regular, middle-class life back in
Toronto - other than he is a 29-year-old labourer with a steady job, and
married a short time - would only help to identify his young wife and two
children.

He can still hear her voice on the phone when he called her from Jamaica to
say he may be delayed. He had lied before flying off and told her he had a
contract job in Miami, which would last a week.

"I called her to say there was a problem. There was silence on the other
end of the phone. She could hardly catch her breath," he recalls.

Jamaican and Canadian officials confirm he was caught last April when a
screener at the Jamaican airport asked him to raise his arms so she could
pat him down.

The next thing he knew, he was being stripped down and the body pack peeled
off.

"I'm not some young punk," he says. "I know what I did, and now I'm paying
the price. But the ones to really suffer are my family members."

As well as the drugs, he was also charged with bribery when he tried to buy
his way out of trouble. He was sentenced to three years for the drug
exportation charges, along with the bribery charge, and will get out next
April.

He'll also pay a fine, equivalent to $11,000 Cdn.

Today he sits in his tiny cell in St. Catherine District prison in Spanish
Town. The jail is infamous. Amnesty International has launched several
campaigns concerning the facility. In 1997, 17 inmates were killed during
one riot. The dead were accused of being gay.

Rice In A Bucket

"We're locked down 14 hours a day," says the Ontario mule. "To pee, we just
have a bottle on the wall. When you have a (crap), you do it in a bag."

He lives in a six-by-nine-foot cell, shared by three men. Some cells around
him have five inmates. Meals are mostly white rice, served in a bucket.
Sometimes there are bits of poultry.

"Seeing a guy die in here is not unusual," he notes. "These are the things
I don't tell my wife."

He doesn't talk to his friend who was caught with him. They fought when
they talked in prison.

"He blames me," he says. "But the truth is, we're both grown men. We made
decisions about something that seemed easy. We screwed up.

"I just want to get back to my wife and new son and playing hockey on
Saturday nights."