Security footage released from a hotel in Lima, Peru apparently shows Britons Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum Connolly before the pair were arrested at the capital's international airport for allegedly trying to smuggle cocaine out of the country.

Twenty-year-old Michaella McCollum Connolly and 19-year-old Melissa Reid were detained in Lima last week, accused of trying to smuggle millions of dollars-worth of cocaine to Europe. The two women have protested their innocence, saying they were forced to carry items in their luggage at gunpoint.

The two women have not yet been charged in the case.

Defence lawyer Peter Madden has protested the innocence of the British suspects, telling media the pair may have been used as cover for a larger drugs shipment.

"When they arrived at the airport they said, and they've told the police this, they said that the police were there at the airport watching them and they knew that the police knew what was going on, and so they were immediately arrested. But it looks as if they were set up, they were duped, they were held, at gunpoint, forced to do this, possibly to let a bigger shipment through at the airport. Someone told me that that was a theory that they are going on, that that is what happened here. That there was a smallish amount, that's 11 kilos, that's big enough but you know there are bigger shipments, and there was speculation that possibly this was sort of a decoy or a diversion," said defence lawyer, Peter Madden.

Presented by Adam Justice