Pair guilty of Ghana drug smuggling

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Yasemin Vatansever and Yatunde Diya, both 16 and from London, must now wait until next month to see if they will be sentenced to up to three years detention. It is expected that their legal team will lodge an appeal.

The friends were arrested in July at Accra's Kotoka airport after drugs officers said found 13lb (6kg) of cocaine in two laptop computer bags.

"They are very upset at the moment," said lawyer Sabine Zanker after the 90-minute hearing in a closed juvenile court in Ghana. "Their families are very deeply disappointed about the verdict."

The youngsters remain in custody. Social workers are preparing reports ahead of sentencing.

Ms Zanker, of Fair Trials Abroad, said: "They are together. It is a real blessing that they are together because it would be much harder if they were apart. They are very supportive of each other. These are two extremely vulnerable young girls whose naivety was ruthlessly exploited by the man who lured them to Ghana and led them to this terrible fate."

Whatever the sentence it seems unlikely they would be allowed to serve all or part of it at home. They would be placed in youth detention away from adult prisoners.

Ms Zanker said: "I do not see any realistic prospect of them serving their sentence in the UK as at the moment there is no transfer agreement between the UK and Ghana. No attempt has been made yet to come to an agreement and even if they were to try to do that it will take some time."

The pair claimed they were not aware that the drugs, said to be worth about £300,000, were in their luggage.

Yasemin is the daughter of immigrants from Cyprus, while Yatunde is of Nigerian descent. Both are UK citizens.