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

Guinea -Bissau gets Policer Equipment Upgrade from UN

BISSAU, June 19 (Reuters) -By Alberto Dabo The United Nations and European Union are to help set up an elite police anti-narcotics unit in Guinea-Bissau to combat trafficking by Colombian cocaine cartels, a U.N. official said on Thursday.

Police in the small West African country, one of the world's poorest states, have been fighting an unequal battle against powerful drug-smuggling gangs who have been using the former Portuguese colony as a transit hub to ship cocaine to Europe.

While the cartels have deployed planes, boats and off-road vehicles to carry the drugs across Guinea-Bissau, the country's judicial police have often lacked cars, petrol, computers and even handcuffs with which to investigate and pursue them.

Antonio Mazzitelli, West Africa representative for the U.N. Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said the European Union was providing $2 million euros ($3 million) to finance setting up the anti-drugs unit within Guinea-Bissau's judicial police.

"The programme will provide for strengthening the operational capability with equipment, as well as training," Mazzitelli told Reuters in Bissau, where the agreement was signed on Wednesday with Guinea-Bissau's judicial police.

The UNODC plan would provide the police with basic equipment like vehicles, communications gear, fuel, bullet-proof vests and even generators to allow vital police work to continue in a country where power blackouts are frequent.

The funds would also cover training and the modernisation of offices for the judicial police, who had been working out of a ramshackle building in downtown Bissau.

This would include the creation of a secure temporary detention centre for suspects. Several suspected Colombian drug traffickers arrested by Guinea-Bissau police over the last two years have walked free, released by compliant local magistrates.

UNODC experts say administrative and judicial corruption is a problem in Guinea-Bissau and they are also working on an system of incentives for the judicial police to prevent graft.
In April, Judicial Police Director Lucinda Ahukharie threatened to quit after rival policemen shot dead one of her counternarcotics officers in a revenge killing.

Mazzitelli said the 2 million euros from the EU was part of around $5 million dollars of international funding the UNODC had managed to secure to strengthen Guinea-Bissau's fight against the drug-traffickers.

The Rest @ Alertnent

Lucinda Ahukharie Threatens to Quit in West African Narco State

By Alberto Dabo
BISSAU, April 14 (Reuters) - The chief of Guinea-Bissau's anti-drugs police has threatened to quit after rival policemen shot a counternarcotics officer in a revenge killing that undermines the country's fight against cocaine cartels.

Judicial Police Director Lucinda Ahukharie offered her resignation after members of an elite rapid response police unit broke into her headquarters on Sunday and tortured and shot dead one of her officers, accused of killing one of their members.

The body of the slain anti-drugs officer was then dumped in the street outside the ramshackle judicial police offices in the capital of the tiny, cash-strapped West African state, which Colombian cartels have targeted for their drugs operations.

Using boats and planes, the cartels have been smuggling tonnes of cocaine from Latin America to Europe, setting up clandestine airstrips, embarcation points and storage depots on Guinea-Bissau's jagged coastline and in its jungle interior.

Police sources said Ahukharie had demanded a full investigation into Sunday's incident, saying her small, under-equipped anti-drugs force of nearly 80 officers could not carry out their job if their own security was under threat.

"What we're seeing is state authority relegated to the level of the streets. How can we work in these conditions?" a judicial police officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Justice Minister Carmelita Pires promised a full inquiry and said the police killers of counternarcotics officer Liberato Neves had been identified and would be "severely punished".
The day before his own killing, Neves had shot dead a member of the Interior Ministry's

Angolan-trained rapid response police in a confused brawl involving several police officers. He was being held in his own HQ when he was dragged out and killed.
Several prisoners also escaped.

Pires refused to accept Ahukharie's resignation, saying she believed the judicial police chief would reconsider.

NEED FOR SECURITY REFORM

Out-gunned by the cocaine cartels, Guinea-Bissau's beleaguered and under-funded anti-drugs police say they lack computers, radios, vehicles and even petrol to act against the drug traffickers. They often have to ask to borrow cars.

To try to stop Guinea-Bissau turning into a "narco-state", the United Nations and western governments have backed Ahukharie's judicial police in their unequal fight against the cartels, helping them to make some seizures and arrests.

The Rest @ Reuters Africa