Venezuelan Drug Planes Held in Guinnea Bissau

21 July 2008

BISSAU - Authorities in Guinea-Bissau are holding two planes that landed in the westAfrican country from Venezuela with more than 500 kilos (1,100 pounds) of cocaine aboard, police said Saturday.

The two twin-engined aircraft landed without authorisation at Bissau's airport last weekend.

The crew, said to be an unknown number of South Americans, subsequently fled, airport sources said.

The sources said the aircraft were found to be carrying 500 kilos and 15 kilos of cocaine respectively.

Police sources said a senior army officer was believed to be implicated in the racket but did not name him.
Guinea-Bissau, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has become a hub for drug smuggling from Latin America to Europe.

On Thursday a speedboat loaded with an estimated 700 kilos of cocaine docked at Quinhamel, 40 kilometres west of the capital, a police source said.

• Men in uniform had unloaded and taken it to Bissau without being challenged, he added.
• Earlier this month a senior police officer, Lucinda Barbosa Ahukarie, said that since 2006 some 300 tonnes of cocaine had passed through Guinea-Bissau every year.
• Only 334 kilos had been seized by police, she said at the first graduation ceremony of police trained in Brazil to combat drug-trafficking.
• They will have a tough job, given the weakness of the country's government, the poverty of its inhabitants, widespread corruption and the almost total lack of a judicial system.

The Rest @ Radioalgo