Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embaló said Monday that the country’s former army boss will not be extradited to any country.

This comes after the US Department of State said it is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of former army Chief of Staff António Indjai.

In a statement issued last week, the US said Mr Indjai has been the subject of a United Nations travel ban since May 2012 as a result of his participation in the April 2012 coup in Guinea Bissau. Additionally, it says, he was indicted by a US court for his role in the global drug trafficking trade.

Antonio Indjai guinea bissau
Guinea-Bissau’s former army Chief of Staff António Indjai. Photo credit: File
He is accused of leading a criminal organisation which took an active part in drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau and the region for many years, even while serving as head of the Guinea-Bissau Armed Forces.

“Between June and November 2012, Indjai agreed to receive and store multi-ton quantities of cocaine purportedly owned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)…Indjai and other co-conspirators agreed to purchase weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, for the FARC using drug proceeds and established a front company in Guinea-Bissau to complete the illicit weapons transactions.”

Mr Indjai was seen as one of the most powerful yet destabilising figures in Guinea-Bissau, operating freely and with impunity throughout West Africa, the US says.

At the time, he was widely seen as the country’s most powerful man.

He actively took part in the narcotics trade and used the illegal proceeds to corrupt and destabilise other foreign governments and undermine the rule of law throughout the region, the US Department of State statement asserts.

However, President has dismissed any possibility that Indjai will answer for his crimes in a US court.

“We do not ratify the Treaty of Rome, just as the US is not a signatory” Guinea-Bissau President Embaló said on Monday.

“If the US does not extradite its citizens, Guinea-Bissau will not do so either”, the head of state told journalists as he travelled to Brazil for a seven-day official visit.

“Guinea-Bissau is a state like the US. They should contact us…I already left guidelines to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask the US for an explanation about this case,” he added, noting that if what the ex-army boss is accused of is true, then “we can judge António Indjai here in Guinea Bissau”.

“No Guinean citizen will be taken out of the country to be tried abroad.”

Guinea Bissau’s military was previously accused of taking part in the narcotics trade for years. It was reportedly using its coastline as cover while taking part in the vice.

Cocaine and Guinea-Bissau: How Africa’s ‘narco-state’ is trying to kick its habit

BBC

28 May 2020

Concern is mounting that Guinea-Bissau’s efforts to stem the flow of drugs to Europe and the US have suffered a setback after a military-backed president took office, writes journalist Ricci Shryock.

Court documents show that the loot seized in Guinea-Bissau’s largest ever drug bust last September included more than 20 vehicles, among them a “cinnamon coloured” Mercedes Benz, $3m (£2.5m) stashed in bank accounts, $90,000 worth of wine and porridge found in a warehouse, and, of course, 1.8 tonnes of cocaine hidden in sacks of rice.

Dubbed Operation Navara, the seizure culminated in 12 men – of Bissau-Guinean, Colombian, Mexican and Portuguese nationalities – being sentenced to between four and 16 years in prison last month.

Guinea-Bissau’s islands make handy smuggling points
Although the two ringleaders were sentenced in absentia after they managed to evade arrest, the case was hailed as a legal success for the West African state in its efforts to shed its reputation as a major transit hub for cocaine flown or shipped from Latin America to Europe and North America.

“For us, this is the result of over eight years of investment, so we look forward to making sure that the future of Guinea-Bissau might be much safer from the infiltration of drug traffickers and transnational criminal networks,” said Antonio Mazzatelli, the regional head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The US, along with the UN, labelled the former Portuguese colony along the Atlantic Ocean a “narco-state” more than 10 years ago, the first time that such a label had been given to an African state.

“I’m sceptical of that definition in the case of Guinea-Bissau,” said Mark Shaw, co-author of a new report entitled Breaking the vicious cycle: cocaine politics in Guinea-Bissau.

“There are networks which certainly protect drug trafficking, but they are also quite courageous elements within the judicial police and within the political system who have stood up to drug trafficking,” he added in an interview.

‘Cocaine coup parallels’
But his report, published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, warns that the cocaine trade could increase after Umaro Cissoko Embaló became president in February following disputed elections in December.

Although there is no suggestion that Mr Embaló a former prime minister and ex-army general , is part of the drug trafficking network, there is concern about the fact that he appears to have the backing of key military figures.

This includes former chief of staff General Antonio Indjai, who seized power in a coup in 2012 partly to “achieve control of the rapidly growing lucrative cocaine trade”, the report said.

Gen Indjai has previously denied any wrongdoing or involvement in trafficking.

Yet the report notes: “The parallels between the ‘cocaine coup’ of 2012 and the seizure of power in early 2020, one that also had clear military backing, have been pointed to by several local observers.”

Convicted drug kingpin freed
The military has been influential in Guinea-Bissau since independence from Portugal in 1974. It has staged at least nine coups, leaving the West African state with weak state institutions.

Some say this has made the country a fertile ground for drug barons.

“Traffickers use as their first instrument, corruption,” said Mr Mazzitelli.

“These criminal markets, they generate large benefits for a few, but the price of it is paid by the rest of the population,” he added.

Former navy chief Bubo Na Tchuto is one of the the most high-profile officials to have been convicted of drug trafficking.

Involved in several failed coup attempts, he was designated a “drug kingpin” by the US and was arrested by its troops in a sting operation off the West African coast in 2013.

Ex-army chief General Antonio Indjai (L) took power in the “cocaine coup” of 2012
Na Tchuto pleaded guilty the following year to conspiring to import drugs to the US, but was sentenced to only four years in prison because of “good behaviour” and for co-operating with investigators.

He is back in Guinea-Bissau, but is now keeping a low public profile.

Mr Shaw’s report said Gen Indjai was the main target of the 2013 operation.

However the “canny old general” suspected something fishy and sent Na Tchuto out to sea to meet the drug dealers who turned out to be US agents.

The political instability has led to vital reforms being put on hold, including upgrading Guinea-Bissau’s only two prisons.

The 10 convicted men are currently being held in a poorly guarded detention centre in the capital, Bissau.

“Even the guards, they don’t have the tools to stop someone from leaving the prison,” said former Justice Minister Ruth Monteiro.

Cocaine was seized near the capital last September
The trial of the men took place in the capital, Bissau, by default. It was meant to take place in the central town of Bissorã, where they were arrested, but there was no prison vehicle to take them there from the detention centre.

They have all appealed against their conviction, but the Appeal Court, which is supposed to hear the case, has never been set up in the 45 years since independence.

So the appeal will now go to the Supreme Court, which has a history of not hearing drug cases.

Cocaine hidden with fish ‘for al-Qaeda’
All this has raised fears that the case will quietly disappear, and the men will walk free.

“We are right now a paradise for drug traffickers,” said Ms Monteiro, who was the justice minister when the 10 were arrested last September.

She said it was vital to fight the drug barons as some of their activities also fund militant Islamist activity in the region.

The military wields enormous influence in Guinea-Bissau
The seizure in March 2019 of nearly 800kg of drugs hidden in the false bottom of a Senegalese-registered truck loaded with frozen fish in Safim town, some 15km (nine miles) from the capital, was a case in point.

“After our investigations, we were convinced the drugs were on the way to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Ms Monteiro said.

Drug money ‘funds election campaigns’

Experts say that drug traffickers are well-entrenched in the region, and refer to the fact that one of the ringleaders on the run – Braima Seidi Ba, who is a national of both Guinea-Bissau and Portugal – has been hopping between The Gambia, Guinea and Mali to evade capture.

The other ringleader – Ricardo Ariza Monje, who is a national of both Mexico and Colombia – is believed to have returned to Latin America.

The March consignment was widely believed to be linked to raising money for electioneering in the run-up to parliamentary elections in Guinea-Bissau scheduled for later that month, Mr Shaw’s report said.

“It was said that the drugs were to have been driven over the Senegalese border, then on to Mali, Mauritania and northward up the coast, before being loaded onto boats bound for the European markets,” the report added.

Guinea-Bissau’s judicial police force, regarded as the country’s most-effective law-enforcement agency, has been leading the fight against drug cartels, with the help of investigators from the UN, the UK and Portugal.

Newly installed President Embaló replaced the agency chief, but after concern was raised about his initial nominee he gave the post to a respected former deputy attorney general, Teresa Alexandrina da Silva.

Mr Shaw said drugs were a “pernicious injection” into Guinea-Bissau’s politics, and it was vital to put an end to trafficking.

“Drugs damage the politics, development, democracy,” he said.

“And unless the issues are resolved, it will continue to drive conflict in the small country. Ordinary Bissau-Guineans deserve much better.”

Still a narco-state?
Guinea-Bissau’s illegal drug economy

Global initiative against transnational organized crime

27 Mar 2018

Guinea-Bissau has long been labelled a narco-state. Today it is likely that the West African country continues to be a major hub for cocaine. The losers in the drug deals are its citizens.

Guinea-Bissau, dubbed by the global media as Africa’s first narco-state, has slipped out of the news. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime has covered the development of drug trafficking, organized crime and political protection in the small West African state over the past few years. That is because events in Guinea-Bissau are likely to be a barometer of wider developments in the West African drug-trafficking political economy. Yet what is perhaps most concerning is how little is known about current developments in the region’s illegal drug economy. As always, Guinea-Bissau is a good place to start. In this guest blog, independent journalist Lorraine Mallinder writes about her recent trip to Bissau.

It’s the bar with no name. Located in the heart of Bissau, it’s a discreet meeting place, painted beige, with plastic chairs and tables on the patio. We’re in West Africa, but the atmosphere has a distinctly Latino flavour, with salsa beats wafting out from the bar’s interior. Sitting outside in the rapidly falling dusk, a couple of Cuban regulars sip their beer watchfully.

The bar, I’m told, is a drop-off point for locally traded bundles of cocaine. A car pulls up near my table. Out gets a glamorous woman, the former wife of José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, an ex-navy chief who was arrested in a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) undercover operation in 2013. US agents posing as members of Colombian rebel group FARC captured the drug kingpin in a dramatic cocaine-for-arms sting on board a luxury yacht.

Today, to the puzzlement of many locals, Na Tchuto is free, released in 2016 after serving the bulk of his four-year prison sentence. Na Tchuto, who used his high-ranking status to wrangle a deal that would net him $1 million per tonne of cocaine brought into the country, received a hero’s welcome on his return. Business as usual, some might say, in a country labelled as Africa’s first narco-state.

It’s been a decade since Guinea-Bissau earned that ignominious tag. Back then, for Latin American drug lords seeking alternative routes to the heavily policed waters around Spain and Morocco, lawless Guinea-Bissau had it all: porous borders, chronically unstable politics, weak institutions and easily bribable officials, like Na Tchuto – and many other public servants. Today, with the country mired in yet another political crisis, there are big question marks over the volume of cocaine still transiting through its borders.

Since independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has struggled with a lack of effective leadership. The past two decades have seen three coups, a civil war, and the assassinations of a sitting president and an army chief, in what was thought to be a tit-for-tat double murder linked to drug profits. No elected president has managed to see out a full term in the tiny West African country.

In recent years, however, many believed Guinea-Bissau was turning the page. This sense of optimism seems to have been linked to two events. The DEA’s arrest of Na Tchuto was thought to have spooked drug lords, diverting cocaine flows to neighbouring countries. And, in 2014, President José Mário Vaz, known as Jomav, came to power in peaceful elections that seemed to herald a new dawn. International donors were certainly convinced, pledging $1.5 billion at a fund-raising conference in Brussels.

But squabbles over the money ensued. In the months after the Brussels fund-raiser, Jomav fell out with the then prime minister, Domingos Simões Pereira, also the leader of the ruling party, the PAIGC. Insiders report that Jomav wanted to wrest control of the pledged cash from Pereira for private agricultural projects in his home village, but Pereira resisted. A few months later, Jomav sacked his prime minister on corruption allegations, but most of the party rallied around Pereira.

Jomav is now at war with his own party, surrounded by a cabal of 15 dissident PAIGC MPs. With the two sides unable to agree on a replacement prime minister, the country’s parliament has been paralyzed for over two years. In early 2018, regional West African economic bloc ECOWAS slapped sanctions on Jomav’s entourage for blocking peacebuilding efforts. It is now feared that Jomav will delay this year’s scheduled parliamentary elections in a bid to control the electoral process and maintain a lock on power.

Unsurprisingly, donors have withdrawn their pledges. Failed once again by its leaders, this impoverished country, where the majority depend on cashew crops, faces an uncertain future.

Cocaine flows off the radar
It’s against this backdrop of potential state collapse that questions are being asked once again about trafficking – although nobody can really say how much cocaine is still coming in, whether politicians and military top brass are still involved and how much control drug lords have.

At the judicial police headquarters in Bissau, the mood is optimistic. The chief, Juscelino De Gaulle Cunha Pereira, says that Guinea-Bissau has not been a narco-state since 2010. It’s a curious claim, since that year pre-dates the 2013 DEA swoop that netted Na Tchuto, an event that seemed to mark a rise in the country’s trafficking activity. But the police chief assures me that his agents were ready to arrest the drug kingpin before the US stepped in. ‘We’d have stopped him,’ he says.

The judicial police, charged with the country’s anti-narcotics operations, have been busy, says De Gaulle Cunha Pereira. The islands of the Bijagos Archipelago, once a staging post for narco landings, are now swarming with agents, resulting in a drop in annual flows of cocaine to less than a tonne, says the police chief. Later, however, he concedes that, as there are no radars for monitoring air traffic and no X-ray scanners to check shipping containers, it’s hard to be sure.

But he is keen to focus on positives, such as the hundreds of diplomatic passports used by traffickers, which were recently seized by the judicial police.

These days, most of the cocaine coming into Guinea-Bissau is brought by mules travelling from Brazil, most of them students, according to the police chief. In 2017, airport agents caught 14 mules, carrying 8.65 kilograms of cocaine.

But De Gaulle Cunha Pereira evidently has an uphill struggle on his hands. Outside the police headquarters a picket line of staff were striking over pay and conditions. The spectacle brings to mind allegations from several sources that poorly paid police agents on the islands, already a fragile line of defence against nimble-footed gangs, are easy prey for drug lords offering cash bribes.

Diplomatic sources in Bissau say that the police narcotics brigade was starved of funding by its previous director, Bacari Biai, who stepped down in 2017 to become the country’s prosecutor general. Now effectively non-operational, the brigade is supposed to work in tandem with the local Transnational Crime Unit, set up by UN agencies and INTERPOL to fight traffickers under the UN’s West African Coast Initiative. As local agencies struggle in a dysfunctional state, international actors seem to have taken their eye off the ball. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime scaled down its presence in the country in March 2017 owing to a lack of funds, according to one official in Dakar.

One high-ranking UN official in Bissau says that the judicial police’s focus on mules is just a ‘diversion’ from the real trade. He estimates that ‘no less than 30 tonnes’ of cocaine is still coming into the country each year. That figure is not far off the UNODC’s 2008 estimate that around 50 tonnes of Latin American cocaine were being shifted each year through West Africa, much of it via lawless Guinea-Bissau.

Big cargos still come by plane, says the official. Some is transported by international fishing boats, legal and illegal, and some is brought to land on small vessels by local fishermen, where it’s moved by the military over the borders.

‘We’ve been telling them to install a radar system,’ he says. ‘Then, we thought maybe it’s better not to do so because, that way, the military would have more control. We thought it would be better to see how the politics develop.’

Either way, the current political situation does not bode well.

‘Traffickers love the instability – a country that has no control of its borders and with no functioning institutions,’ he says.

Tracking the problem has become more complex, with shifting alliances and new players linked to groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda said to be working with Latin American cartels.

‘The country is still a major hub. The actors might change, but the game remains the same,’ he says. ‘People are afraid. They can’t take action.’

Cocaine is so plentiful on the streets of Bissau that it’s like a currency, used to acquire goods or services, or to pay debts: ‘I owe you 100k. I give you 250k’s worth and you get rid of it,’ says the official, by way of example.

I discover just how easy it is to strike a deal after interviewing Abu, a former mule, who used to carry cocaine in bags in his stomach from Brazil to Bissau for €750 a trip. He offers me a kilo of cocaine for €20 000, which, he says, will fetch €50 000 on the streets in the UK, or €80 000 if I sell it in Switzerland.

I put to him the judicial police’s estimate of the flow of one tonne a year. ‘They’re the police – they would say that,’ he says. ‘Of course the planes and boats are still coming in. They can’t be detected.’

Decades after Guinea-Bissau’s hard-won battle for freedom from colonial rule, the country is still barely functional, kept from collapse only by the presence of international agencies, and constantly at risk of state capture by drug gangs. The next year, which is supposed to include parliamentary and presidential elections, will be crucial in determining where the country goes next. But, for now, Guinea-Bissau remains a country on the edge.

Special Report: How U.S. drug sting targeted West African military chiefs

DAKAR (Reuters) – It was late afternoon as the speedboat cut across the waters off West Africa for its rendezvous with guns and drugs.

Behind lay the steamy shore of Guinea-Bissau, one of the poorest countries on the planet. Ahead lay the Al Saheli, a luxurious 115-foot white motor yacht with tinted black windows.

Riding in the speedboat was Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto – a Guinea-Bissau former naval chief and war hero and, according to U.S. investigators, a kingpin of West Africa’s drug trade. Na Tchuto was allegedly hoping to seal a deal involving millions of dollars and tons of cocaine. He was also in for a surprise.

“Once onboard (the Al Saheli), we were offered champagne,” said Vasco Antonio Na Sia, the captain of the speedboat, speaking on Guinea-Bissau state television when he later returned home. As the new arrivals awaited the refreshments, agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) stormed out of the Al Saheli’s hold.

“Instead of champagne, we got 50 heavily armed men running at us shouting ‘Police, Police!’,” said Na Sia. The DEA team arrested Na Tchuto and two of his aides, but later let go Na Sia and another man, his uncle Luis Sanha.

“They told me, ‘You and Luis will be freed because your names are not on our list.’ That is how I was saved,” Na Sia said. He and Sanha could not be contacted for further comment.

The sting on April 2 was part of a U.S. operation to lure two prominent figures from Guinea-Bissau into international waters so they could be seized and taken to the United States for trial on allegations of drug smuggling. Court documents and Reuters interviews show the elaborate nature of the operation, which was part of a larger effort by the DEA to counter drug cartels seeking to use weak African states as transit points for smuggling.

“The DEA’s focus in Africa is to disrupt or dismantle the most significant drug, chemical, money laundering, and narco-terrorism organizations on the continent,” Thomas Harrigan, the DEA’s deputy administrator, told a Senate hearing in 2012.

The operation off Guinea-Bissau was the first time the DEA had targeted such high-ranking officials in an African state. Na Tchuto is now facing trial in New York on charges of conspiring to traffic cocaine, including to the United States. The U.S. Department of Justice says his capture has helped to break a transnational drugs ring. Na Tchuto denies the charges.

His two arrested aides were also taken to New York and face charges of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. They deny the charges.

Angry officials in Guinea-Bissau say Na Tchuto is the victim of entrapment and was illegally seized in Bissau’s sovereign waters. Government spokesman Fernando Vaz called the sting a “kidnapping” and said if there is evidence of military officials involved in drugs smuggling, they should be tried domestically.

The DEA says Na Tchuto and his two aides were captured in international waters; it declined to provide further details while the court case is pending. It remains firm in its view that certain elements in Guinea-Bissau pose a danger that needs to be countered.

“Guinea-Bissau is a narco-state,” said DEA spokesman Lawrence R. Payne in an email to Reuters. “These drug trafficking organizations are a threat to the security, stability and good governance in West Africa and pose a direct threat not only to the security of West Africans, but also of U.S. citizens.”

The United States is keen to have stable partners in a region rich in commodities but struggling to fend off organized crime, maritime piracy and militant Islamism. But the DEA failed to capture its biggest target, General Antonio Indjai, whom it accuses of conspiracy to smuggle drugs and supporting FARC, a Colombian rebel group.

Indjai grabbed power in Guinea-Bissau in a 2012 coup and remains its top military official, enjoying extensive influence, though the country also has a president. Lieutenant-Colonel Daha Bana Na Walna, spokesman for Guinea-Bissau’s Armed Forces Chief of Staff, called the DEA operation “regrettable” and said the alleged offences had been invented by the DEA.

He complained that Guinea-Bissau lacked equipment to tackle powerful drug cartels and was being unfairly victimized as a “narco state,” especially when compared with the scale of drug-trafficking in other West African countries.

“We are fighting with the means that we have … we don’t have helicopters, vessels or vehicles,” he said.

INTERNATIONAL CROSSROADS

The former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau is home to just 1.6 million people and covers a modest 10,800 square miles; but with its array of islands and unpoliced mangrove creeks, it is a smuggler’s paradise.

For years the country has been an important transit point in the lucrative drug trade from South America to Europe. United Nations experts estimate some 50 metric tons (55.116 tons) of cocaine, mostly from Colombia and Venezuela, pass through West Africa every year.

A Gulfstream jet left sitting on the tarmac at Bissau’s Osvaldo Vieira International Airport is testament to the problem. It landed in July 2008 with what the U.N. believes was a bulk shipment of cocaine. When local police tried to investigate, they were blocked for several days by the army. Once the police did gain access, they found the plane empty – but sniffer dogs confirmed traces of cocaine, according to a former Guinea-Bissau government source and international law enforcement officials.

Two military interventions in the governance of Guinea-Bissau since 2010 – the second a coup in April 2012 – have deepened Western fears that the country is in the grip of suspected drugs barons like Na Tchuto, whom the U.S. added to its list of drug kingpins in 2010.

The decision to target Na Tchuto and Indjai in elaborate stings was taken by the U.S. Department of Justice. Regional diplomats, who better understand the fragile political situation in Guinea-Bissau, had little input, according to some U.S. officials. Some diplomats feared the stings could trigger another coup or spark conflict between rival factions in the country’s armed forces.

One source with knowledge of the operation said a handful of DEA agents set up a field office in the U.S. embassy in Dakar, the capital of neighboring Senegal, where they worked huddled away from local embassy staff.

“There was no coordination in policy. The DEA had an opportunity and they took it … No one thought this through,” said a U.S. official, who asked not to be named, referring to the risk of the operation causing unrest among Guinea-Bissau’s military.

The DEA’s noose began to tighten around Na Tchuto in August last year when the bespectacled ex-navy admiral agreed to a meeting in Senegal with a man the DEA says Na Tchuto thought was a cocaine broker. In fact, he was an undercover DEA operative.

At the meeting Na Tchuto allegedly said he felt it was time for a big narcotics shipment. “Na Tchuto noted that the Guinea-Bissau government was weak in light of the recent coup d’etat and that it was therefore a good time for the proposed cocaine transaction,” prosecutors say.

In subsequent meetings Na Tchuto’s aides discussed the practicalities of the deal, which would involve taking delivery of a shipment of cocaine at sea, bringing it to shore and trucking it to an underground bunker for storage, according to prosecutors.

Na Tchuto allegedly told the DEA source he wanted $1 million for each metric ton of cocaine brought into the country. He offered to use a company he owned as a front to ship the drugs back out when needed, according to prosecutors.

Sabrina Shroff, a lawyer acting for Na Tchuto, declined to comment on the specifics of his case, but said he had pleaded not guilty. She added that the DEA’s tactics amounted to entrapment, that Na Tchuto was in poor health and that she was struggling to find interpreters who spoke Guinea-Bissau’s Balanta language.

The DEA declined to comment on how it had conducted the case; however, sting operations are a common tactic used by the agency, though they are rarely targeted at such senior foreign officials.

TWIN STINGS

In parallel with the Na Tchuto operation, the DEA also set up meetings with Indjai, say prosecutors. In 2010 Indjai had ousted his boss and briefly detained the prime minister, and had seized greater control in the 2012 coup.

To snare the military leader, undercover DEA officers posed as members of the Colombian rebel group FARC, or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, according to prosecutors. FARC is designated a terrorist organization by Washington and runs large cocaine trafficking operations.

The officers contacted Indjai through local and Colombian traffickers operating in Guinea-Bissau and concocted a plan to import Colombian cocaine for transshipment to other countries, including the United States. In return, they asked Indjai to arrange a shipment of weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, for FARC fighters to use against American helicopters in Colombia.

During meetings with undercover DEA operatives in July 2012, Indjai agreed that FARC cocaine would be shipped to Guinea-Bissau for later distribution to the United States, according to prosecutors. One of his associates said the general would expect to retain 13 percent of the drugs as a “fee” for government officials, prosecutors say.

Indjai also said he would help supply weapons to FARC and would brief Guinea-Bissau’s transitional president, Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo, on the plan, according to prosecutors.

Nhamadjo is acting as interim head of state until elections can be held. His government has vehemently denied any involvement in drug trafficking and has vowed to defend its citizens against the U.S. charges.

Indjai is charged with drug trafficking and providing support for terrorists targeting the United States. His spokesman, Na Walna, said the DEA had used “infiltrators” who had proposed the drugs-for-arms exchanges. “If you invent a crime, then there can be no crime,” he said


Prosecutors allege that during recorded meetings over several months to November 2012, Indjai and his associates agreed to import some 4 metric tons of cocaine, of which 500 kg (1,102 lbs) would go to the United States. A trafficker who operates in Guinea-Bissau listed equipment needed for the work, including trucks with hidden compartments to smuggle the cocaine to the front company’s warehouse, prosecutors allege.

As the stings headed towards their climax, the United States shut down its diplomatic office in Bissau, anticipating staff there would be at risk of a backlash if local officials were seized.

DELAYS AND SUSPICIONS

The Al Salehi motor yacht was a key part of the DEA’s plan – but earned itself a reputation as a lemon among U.S. operatives. The DEA had seized the yacht in an earlier operation and grappled with mechanical problems on the way to Guinea-Bissau, according to a U.S. official.

Those setbacks had delayed the sting by a month. As the ship waited off the coast for the crucial moment, another delay disrupted plans.

Na Tchuto was suspicious, or cautious, or both. He initially sent Na Sia, the speedboat captain, and his aides to the Al Saheli on their own. The DEA feared their scheme was unraveling. An irate undercover agent who called himself Alex berated the visitors and demanded to deal with Na Tchuto in person, according to Na Sia.

After several hours Na Tchuto was finally lured offshore and seized. But the delay may have cost the DEA its bigger prize. The agency had intended to arrest Na Tchuto first, then attempt to lure out Indjai, a bulky man who enjoys sitting in the shade of the cashew trees at the Amura military base in the capital, by speedboat from another port. The plan failed.

It is not clear why Indjai did not go, but one Western diplomat suggested the lateness of the hour may have been a factor. “By the time they got Na Tchuto it was nearly dark, and they had no chance of getting Indjai offshore,” said the source. Whether Indjai had agreed to a meeting on the Al Salehi is unclear; but it headed off without him.

Exactly where Na Tchuto was seized is disputed. The speedboat captain Na Sia said on local state TV that he had initially met the Al Saheli not far from the island of Caravela and that when he returned later with Na Tchuto, the Al Saheli was in “Guinea-Bissau’s territorial waters.”

The Guinea-Bissau government has supported this view. The DEA says the Al Saheli was in international waters. Either way, the vessel set sail for Cape Verde, where Na Tchuto was put on a plane and flown to New York.

THE FALLOUT

The semi-successful sting had an immediate political impact, according to locals in Bissau, the country’s capital.

In the days following Na Tchuto’s capture, rival military camps deployed heavily armed soldiers to the streets, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles heading out of the capital. With President Nhamadjo in Germany for medical treatment for complications from diabetes, fears rose of another coup, or a violent power struggle within the army.

Guinea-Bissau officials hit back at the United States. “The seizure of Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto and the accusations against General Antonio Indjai, have hurt Guinea-Bissau … creating fear in the hearts of our population of another conflict,” said Vaz, the government spokesman.

Some Western diplomats and Bissau-watchers are worried about how Indjai will react to the failed plot to seize him.

“If Mr. Antonio Indjai is guilty of the allegations made against him, I would hope that we find ways to ease him out of the military in a manner that does not paint him and his supporters into a corner,” said U.N. Special Representative to Guinea-Bissau, Jose Ramos-Horta. “A cornered animal would have no choice but to fight.”

Payne, the DEA spokesman, and other U.S. officials said that the United States was generally keen to help local law enforcement agencies strengthen their own capacities to combat organized crime. But direct U.S. intervention reflects the suspicion of international law enforcement officials in the region that little action was taken by local agencies, at least partly because of high-level complicity.

“That was an operation that needed to be done just by us,” said one U.S. official, referring to the capture of Na Tchuto. “There is a sense in some circles that we’ve got commandos lurking offshore ready to pounce. I don’t think this will become a regular occurrence in Guinea-Bissau. But if they think it is, no harm done there.”

Guinea-Bissau assassinations: Is Colombia’s drug trade behind them?

March 3, 2009

The Christian Science Monitor

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

The assassinations were committed gangland style – a bomb in a stairwell, and a rapid fire shootout – which is perhaps not so surprising in a country that has swiftly become a major transit hub for narcotics into Europe.

But the tit-for-tat revenge killings of Guinea-Bissau’s top two leaders, its Army chief and its president, have left this poor country without leaders and the prospect of continued military rule.

By Monday evening, the tiny African country’s Army had shut down two private radio stations, and had escorted the president’s widow and children to the home of the United Nations representative in Guinea-Bissau.

Meanwhile, the Armed Forces assured citizens on state-run radio that no coup was in process, but that the Army would respect the Constitution and allow the head of parliament to succeed the president.

Unstable region

Coming just a month after an apparently popular coup in the neighboring country of Guinea, the double assassinations in Guinea-Bissau are a troubling sign for a region with weak institutions for self-government and strong incentives for corruption.

“This is bad news for the country, and there are real risks of factional fighting between elements of the military,” says Richard Moncrieff, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, based in Dakar, Senegal. “But the question now is what direction the Army intervention takes. To my mind, the risks are the mid-level officers, [who] are not used to running a country and tend to react harshly if a problem comes up.”

With a weak economy and institutions of governance, it’s not surprising that Guinea-Bissau is seen as a haven for criminal enterprises.

In recent years, Colombian drug cartels have begun flying small planes across the Atlantic, landing on tiny islands dotting the Guinean coastline. Since Guinea-Bissau has no navy to patrol its waters, the cartels were free to unload tons of cocaine destined for Europe. The drugs were then distributed to impoverished African migrants, who would carry the drugs north by boat to the shores of France, Italy, and Spain.

Government corruption, fed by poor government salaries at the bottom and uncertain political leadership at the top, means that Guinea Bissau has few tools to stop the drug trafficking.

Rivalry goes back decades

While the bad blood between Army chief Gen. Tagme na Waie and President Joao Bernando Vieira goes back decades, tensions increased during the country’s November 2008 elections, after General Waie accused President Vieira of involvement in the drug trade.

After a narrow escape from an assassination attempt in November, Waie publicly stated that the president wanted to get rid of him and was using his personal armed militia of 400 men to hunt him down.

“This recent set of killings can be explained [as] the action of the drug traffickers, who would not allow anything to get in the way or to obstruct their links with Europe,” says David Zounmenou, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane, formerly known as Pretoria.

“Africans are very reluctant to call for external interventions,” Dr. Zounmenou adds, noting that many African countries are still suspicious of Western countries, some of which were colonial rulers less than 50 years ago. “But drug trafficking is not a domestic matter anymore. It affects the stability of many countries, it affects systems of governance, and it allows groups to acquire weapons.”

How a tiny West African country became the world’s first narco state

The Guardian

It is the world’s fifth poorest nation with no prisons and few police. Now this small west African failed state has been targeted by Colombian drug cartels, turning it into a transit hub for the cocaine trade out of Latin America and into Europe.

The roads outside the X Club nightspot in Bissau, capital of the world’s fifth poorest country, are cracked and pot-holed. They have not been repaired since they were torn up by the tracks of military vehicles during Guinea-Bissau’s civil war of the late 1990s. But the cars that are parked outside – Porsche and Audi four-wheel drives – wouldn’t look out of place in the wealthiest quarters of London.

Inside, the music is thumping Europop, a beer costs more than twice the average daily income of a dollar a day. Many of the clubbers, though, are knocking back the imported whisky, which costs up to $80 a bottle. One of the regulars points out the people who represent the various stages of the cocaine supply chain from South America via Guinea-Bissau in West Africa to the UK and the rest of Europe. ‘He’s a pretty big dealer, and that’s one of his security guys. That guy there thinks he’s big news but he’s just small-time. That woman is a mule. She’s been to Europe a couple of times.

Down a street of elaborate colonial-style buildings is Ana’s restaurant. Beneath red-tiled roofs, giant candles flicker in the gentle, humid evening breeze – it could be mistaken for an exotic tourist destination. But ‘the only visitors we get are the Colombians’, sighs Ana, ‘this country is being destroyed by drugs. They’re everywhere. A few weeks ago, the man who used to be my gardener knocked at the door and offered to sell me 7kg of cocaine.’

Among the destitute locals are scores of wealthy, gaudy Colombian drug barons in their immodest cars, flaunting their hi-tech luxury lifestyle, with beautiful women on their arms. Outside Bissau city are exclusive Hispanic-style haciendas with wide verandahs, turquoise swimming pools and gates patrolled by armed guards.

By day, Guinea-Bissau looks like the impoverished country it is. Most people cannot afford a bus fare, never mind a four-wheel drive. There is no mains electricity. Water supplies are restricted to the wealthy few, and landmark buildings such as the presidential palace remain wrecked nine years after the end of the war. But this wreck of a country is what the UN – which declared war last week on celebrity cocaine culture – calls the continent’s ‘first narco-state’. West Africa has become the hub of a flow of cocaine from South America into Europe, now that other routes have become tough for the traffickers.

US drug enforcement agents report that the old cocaine channels through the Caribbean, markedly Jamaica and Panama, have become more intensively policed, forcing the Colombians to develop new routes to traffic cocaine. The increasing might of Mexico’s powerful drug cartels has forced the South Americans to search for trafficking routes to Europe across the Atlantic rather than through Central America.

Moreover, the West African coast can be reached across the shortest transatlantic crossing from South America: either by plane from Colombia, with a re-fuelling stop in Brazil; or by ship from Brazil or Venezuela. The boats leaving South America travel only by night, remaining motionless by day, covered in blue tarpaulins to avoid detection from the air. The journey can be completed in four to five nights travelling this way.

Once ravaged by the transatlantic slave trade, the West African coast is again ‘under attack’, says the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, who calls the impact on Africa of Europe’s cocaine habit an echo of that of slavery. ‘In the 19th century, Europe’s hunger for slaves devastated West Africa. Two hundred years later, its growing appetite for cocaine could do the same.’

The seizure of West Africa by Colombian and other drug cartels has happened with lightning speed. Since 2003, 99 per cent of all drugs seized in Africa have been found in West Africa. Between 1998 and 2003, the total quantity of cocaine seized each year in Africa was around 600kg. But by 2006, the figure had risen five-fold and during the first nine months of last year had already reached 5.6 tonnes. The latest seizure, from a Liberian ship – Blue Atlantic – intercepted by the French navy last month, was 2.4 tonnes of pure cocaine.

But while seizure rates globally are estimated to be 46 per cent of total traffic, the amounts found in West Africa are ‘the tip of the iceberg’, says UNODC. Even though one recent raid in Guinea-Bissau netted 635kg of cocaine, the traffickers were thought to have still made off with a further two tonnes.

The street value of the drugs trafficked far exceeds gross national product. A quarter of all cocaine consumed in Western Europe is trafficked through West Africa, according to UNOCD, for a local wholesale value of $1.8bn and a retail value of 10 times that in Europe.

Nigerian drug gangs have always been an energetic presence on the global trafficking scene, but the target of the South American traffickers have been the ‘failed states’ along the Gold Coast, where poverty is extreme, where society has been ravaged by war and the institutions of state can be easily bought off – so that instead of enforcement, there is collusion. And no more so than Guinea-Bissau, whose weakness makes it a trafficker’s dream prey.

In Guinea-Bissau, says the UNODC, the value of the drugs trade is greater than the national income. ‘The fact of the matter,’ says the Consultancy Africa Intelligence agency, is that without assistance, Guinea-Bissau is at the mercy of wealthy, well-armed and technologically advanced narcotics traffickers.’

Guinea Bissau, with a population of 1.5 million, is ranked fifth from bottom in the UN’s world development index. Even its recent history is one of torment: after 13 years of bloody guerrilla conflict, it won independence from Portugal, spent the first years under a Marxist Leninist dictatorship, then 18 under João Bernardo Vieira, until he was ousted by a military rebellion. Successive crises, two wars and economic collapse brought Vieira back in 2005, with a purge of the army and deceptive stability.

The White House has singled out Guinea-Bissau as ‘a warehouse refuge and transit hub for cocaine traffickers from Latin America, transporting cocaine to Western Europe. Costa says: ‘When I went to Guinea-Bissau, the drug wealth was everywhere. From the air, you can see the Spanish hacienda villas, and the obligatory black four-wheel-drives are everywhere, with the obligatory scantily-clad girl, James Bond style. There were certain hotels I was advised not to stay in.’

A senior official at the US’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) with a long record of fighting transatlantic drug trafficking, explained how and why the capture of Guinea-Bissau took place, and the trail to Europe. ‘Geographically, West Africa makes sense. The logical things is for the cartels to take the shortest crossing over the ocean to West Africa, by plane – to one of the many airstrips left behind by decades of war, or by drop into the thousands of little bays – or by boat all the way. A ship can drop anchor in waters completely unmonitored, while fleets of smaller craft take the contraband ashore.

‘A place like Guinea Bissau is a failed state anyway, so it’s like moving into an empty house.’ There is no prison in Guinea-Bissau, he says. One rusty ship patrols a coastline of 350km, and an archipelago of 82 islands. The airspace is un-patrolled. The police have few cars, no petrol, no radios, handcuffs or phones.

‘You walk in, buy the services you need from the government, army and people, and take over. The cocaine can then be stored safely and shipped to Europe, either by ship to Spain or Portugal, across land via Morocco on the old cannabis trail, or directly by air using “mules”.’ One single flight into Amsterdam in December 2006 was carrying 32 mules carrying cocaine from Guinea-Bissau.

The official admitted ‘this has happened quickly, and the response has been tardy. They’re ahead of the game.’ And it didn’t help that most Western diplomatic presence had left Bissau during the fighting, preferring to operate from neighbouring Senegal. The US and Britain shut up shop in Bissau in 1998, the Americans only last July reopening a diplomatic office in response to the cocaine raids.

Although much of the cocaine goes directly to Spain and Portugal, London is becoming an increasingly prominent final destination, says the official – because of the street prices the drug commands – yet Britain also has no permanent diplomatic presence in Bissau, and has not joined the Iberian countries and the EU in contributing to the latest UN plans to help the country. According to the UNODC, the UK and Spain have now overtaken America in the consumption of cocaine per head.

Guinea Bissau’s cocaine Calvary began three years ago when fishermen on one island found packages of white powder washed up on the beach. They had no idea what the mysterious substance was. ‘At first, they took the drug and they put it on their bodies during traditional ceremonies,” recalls local journalist Alberto Dabo. ‘Then they put it on their crops. All their crops died because of that drug. They even used it to mark out a football pitch’.

The real moment of truth came when two Latin Americans arrived by chartered plane, armed with $1 million in ‘buyback’ cash, which the locals gleefully accepted. The two men were apprehended by police, but released. ‘When people found that it was cocaine and they could sell it,’ says Dabo, ‘some of those fishermen bought cars and built houses.’

As well as the favourable location, in Guinea Bissau the cocaine gangs have found a country where the rule of law barely exists. ‘It’s an easy country to be active if you’re an organised crime lord,’ says the deputy regional head of UNODC, Amado Philip de Andres. ‘Law enforcement has literally no control for two reasons: there is no capacity and there is no equipment’.

A further development highlighted by the DEA and UNODC is that Guinea Bissau and other West African countries are being targeted by Asian and African cartels trafficking heroin across the Atlantic in the opposite direction, to the US. Last year, the DEA and police in Chicago tracked nine West Africans who had moved heroin originating in South-east Asia through various West African countries, markedly Guinea-Bissau, to the central US.

Estimates vary as to the cogency of the Colombian presence, but one observer suggests there are as many as 60 Colombian drugs traffickers in Guinea-Bissau. Colombians have bought local businesses, including factories and warehouses, and built themselves large homes protected by armed guards. They and their local hired help flaunt their liberty to operate – and the money they make from doing so.

‘We can see these people walking in complete freedom. They are parading their wealth. They’re showing it completely openly,’ says Jamel Handem, of a coalition of civic groups called Platform GB.

Guinea-Bissau’s armed forces and some politicians are thought to be deeply involved in the drugs trade. Last year, two military personnel were detained along with a civilian in a vehicle carrying 635kg of cocaine. The army secured the soldiers’ release and so far there is no sign that they will face charges.

In his large, carpeted, air-conditioned office, a refrigerator humming quietly in the corner, the army spokesman, Colonel Arsenio Balde, brushes aside suggestions the incident proves the army’s complicity in the drugs trade. He says the soldiers were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time: ‘They were on the road hitching a ride and they saw this car driving by. They asked for a ride and then this guy stopped, and later on this car was stopped and they were arrested. You don’t have any evidence of high-level involvement. Just please, bring the evidence. That’s what we’re asking for.’

Government spokesman Pedro da Costa gives a similar response when asked if the government is involved in the drugs trade. ‘I don’t have any information on that,’ he says, curtly. He insists the authorities are keen to tackle drugs traffickers, but don’t have the resources. Like many others in Guinea-Bissau, though, he’s worried that disputes over control of the trade could break out, pushing the country back to civil war. ‘We’re worried, of course. We’re all concerned. If it’s going to bring consequences to our people similar to the war of 1998-99, I think today the motivation would be different. But of course, there is a danger for the country.’

Parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for this month, have been postponed until the end of the year. The campaign could lead to heightened tension between political groups, and provide more scope for corruption. ‘One of the risks now is that they will have a deep penetration of dirty money into politics that will overturn everything in the country,’ says Fafali Kudawo, rector of the country’s first university, ‘because this country is very, very fragile, and he who has money can do whatever he wants. You do not know at any given moment what will change the situation or lead the country to war or to violence’.

The UNOCD Office has drawn up a detailed plan to help Guinea-Bissau. In 2006 it suggested a possible budget of several hundred million dollars to potential donors. They refused to pay. Last year the agency came up with a far more modest programme concentrating on reform of the security services, boosting the judicial police, and building a jail. The estimated cost was $19 million. In December a donor conference in Lisbon produced pledges of $6.5m.

As though the suffocation of society by the cartels were not enough, Guinea-Bissau inevitably suffers from a proliferation of addiction among its own people. ‘Foot soldiers are paid in kind,’ says Antonio Maria Costa, ‘and whatever is left behind is sold domestically.’ With addicts hidden away in villages, many still believe that their hallucinations are the result of evil spirits.

When United Nations workers went to the country’s only excuse for a rehabilitation unit in a mangrove swamp 30km from the capital, they found a man called Bubacar Gano, who calls himself ‘the first man to smoke pedra’ – as crack cocaine is known in the country. He recalls the fishing boat that lost its load in the sea in 2005, saying: ‘Most of the locals who found the packages had no idea what it was or what to do with it. But I knew. After a while I became crazy and aggressive. But it is a difficult thing to stop smoking pedra.’

Guinea-Bissau factfile
· Sandwiched between Senegal and Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau is a tiny wedge of land, largely composed of mangrove swamps and islets, and an archipelago of 90 islands.

· Colonised in the 16th century, it broke away from Portuguese control in 1974 after a 12-year struggle for independence. During the Eighties and Nineties, the presidency of João Bernardo Vieira brought a measure of stability to the country but little development.

· The capital, Bissau, remains hazardous. Unexploded ordnance continues to be found, even though it was declared a ‘mine-free’ zone in 2006. New mines were laid recently by rebels fighting over the Casamance area to the north.

· Guinea-Bissau’s roaring drugs trade sees an estimated one tonne of pure Colombian cocaine a day leave the country, most of it en route to Europe.