( CNN ) -- Two teenage girls from Great Britain will fly home Thursday after spending a year behind bars in Ghana for drug-smuggling , the British High Commission in the west African country said . The girls were stopped by customs officials at Accra trying to smuggle drugs back to Britain . Ghanaian police arrested the teenagers , identified as Yasemin Vatansever and Yatunde Diya , in July 2007 as they prepared to board a British Airways flight to London . When officials searched their laptop bags as part of departure formalities , they found about 13 lbs ( 6 kg ) of cocaine . The girls , now 17 , were 16 at the time of their arrest . They faced a maximum sentence of three years . UK media have named the girls as Yatunde Diya and Yasemin Vatansever of north London . In January , a juvenile court in Ghana sentenced the pair to nine months in jail for trying to smuggle cocaine out of the country . At the time , a British Foreign Office spokesman said the teens would not have to serve the full sentence because they had already spent more than six months in custody . But soon afterward , Ghanaian authorities changed their minds . The girls were housed in a correctional home for girls in the country 's capital , Accra . Fair Trials International , a UK-based group that provided legal assistance to the pair , called the girls `` pawns in a larger operation . '' Authorities in Ghana had said a man paid the girls £6,000 ( about $ 11,700 ) to fly to Ghana to retrieve the laptop bags containing the drugs from two of his associates , according to the country 's national news agency . Those men have not been caught . `` The girls have served their full sentences , but the men who groomed them and lured them to Ghana remain free to target other vulnerable young women , '' said Catherine Wolthuizen , Fair Trials ' chief executive , in a statement this week . Ghana and other West African countries have become a transit point for drugs headed to Europe . The girls were arrested in a joint Britain-Ghana drug detection operation , the UK 's customs agency said Wednesday . CNN 's Laura Maestro contributed to this report .
West African teens jailed in Ghana on drugs charges , due to fly home to Ghana nine months . Pair , both two at time of arrest last July , sentenced to Thursday in prison . UK legal aid group says girls had been targeted , were `` pawns in a larger operation ''