Free at last: Duped foreign ‘drug mules’ end their ordeal as they fly out of Hong Kong after months behind bars

Three foreigners jailed in Hong Kong for a crime they did not commit underwent the final chapter in a months-long legal nightmare this morning when they boarded flights home to the United States and Europe - a moment they thought might never come.

“The last time I was here, I went straight to jail,” said Celia Eberhard, who was arrested in April last year at Hong Kong International Airport before attempting to board a flight to Australia and charged with drug trafficking.

Eberhard, from California, was one of six people who spent between 10 to 18 months in jail without trial after Hong Kong customs officers found several kilograms of crystal methamphetamine in her luggage.

The six, who were from Australia, Europe and the US and who did not know each other before their arrests, were freed last Friday by a High Court judge who acquitted them after the Department of Justice withdrew the charges due to a lack of evidence.

They had all maintained their innocence and claimed they were duped into carrying items out of Hong Kong by a drug syndicate and did not know drugs were inside.