Cassie Sainsbury has admitted she attempted to smuggle 5.8kg of cocaine in her suitcase out of Colombia in 2017.

Australian drug smuggler “Cocaine Cassie” Sainsbury has admitted she attempted to take 5.8kg of cocaine in her suitcase out of Colombia because “I needed the money”.

The former personal trainer from Adelaide, who was caught the cocaine concealed in headphones in 2017, has been released on parole in Bogota.

In an interview filmed this week with 60 Minutes after her release from El Buen Pastor women’s prison, Sainsbury says: “Obviously I accepted to come and do it.

“Because I needed the money.

“But it wasn’t exactly like I came here thinking ‘Yes, I’m going to go and smuggle drugs’.

“It wasn’t like that.

“There’s a lot of things that I regret about the situation I was in.

“It’s been three long years thinking about the time when I was going to be able to walk through this door.”

Now aged 24, Sainsbury was among 4000 prisoners released after Colombian President Ivan Duque signed a decree due to concerns of overcrowding in prisons amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Looking as if she has lost weight and speaking with a slight accent, Sainsbury said she “wouldn’t change” the experience of being locked up because it had made her “stronger person”.

“I can say that I grew as a person, I grew up a lot, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about people, I’ve learned how to analyse people better,” she told 60 Minutes in the exclusive interview which will be aired on Sunday.

“I’ve learned not to trust people so much.

“It’s been definitely a massive learning curve but, at the same time, everything that I’ve been through in prison, everything that I learnt I wouldn’t change it because it’s made me a stronger person it’s made me who I am today.”

Sainsbury will have to stay in Colombia for another 27 months as part of her parole conditions.

Originally facing more than 20 years locked up in Colombia, she later negotiated a six-year sentence with a plea deal.

Last year, Sainsbury revealed she was planning to marry her Venezuelan girlfriend Joli, 29, who she met in the prison and who proposed to her.

“She stole my heart. We are very happy together and if time allows us, we will be with each other for many years,” Sainsbury told New Idea in 2019.

At the time of her arrest, she was engaged to 25-year-old Australian Scott Broadbridge, but they split in 2018.