Guinea-Bissau ex-navy chief to face US drugs charges

 

Guinea-Bissau ex-navy chief to face US drugs charges

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22047852

 

Rear Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto Rear Admiral Na Tchuto has been

named by the US as a drugs kingpin

 

The former chief of the navy in Guinea-Bissau has arrived in the US where he

is expected to be face drugs charges, officials have said.

 

Rear Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto is in custody in New York after he

was detained while travelling on a yacht in the east Atlantic.

 

Adm Na Tchuto is described by the US as a kingpin in Guinea-Bissau's huge

drugs trade.

 

The small West African state is a staging post for drug-smuggling gangs.

 

Cocaine is smuggled to Guinea-Bissau from Latin America before finding its

way to Europe as well as the US.

Asset-freeze

 

The indictment against Adm Na Tchuto and two other defendants states they

were middlemen in a huge drug smuggling operation originating in Latin

America, AFP news agency reports.

 

It alleges they "worked together to receive ton-quantities of cocaine,

transported by vessel from South America to Guinea-Bissau, and then to store

the cocaine in Guinea-Bissau before its shipment to other locations,

including the United States".

 

Public television in the Cape Verde Islands reported that Adm Na Tchuto and

four other Guinea-Bissau nationals were taken into custody aboard a yacht in

international waters in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.

 

They were arrested by US federal drug agents, a law enforcement official

told Associated Press. The boat they were travelling on was reportedly

displaying a Panama flag.

Previously uninhabited island Rubane in the Bijagos archipelago,

Guinea-Bissau Small, often uninhabited, islands off West Africa are often

used as smuggling points

 

The five were then taken to nearby Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony

about 1,000km (620 miles) west of Guinea-Bissau, the TV station reported.

 

The former navy chief was flown from there to the United States.

 

Guinea-Bissau government spokesman Fernando Vaz told AP that he hoped that

Adm Na Tchuto would receive fair legal treatment and representation in the

US.

 

A booming cocaine trade has turned Guinea-Bissau - a country also plagued by

coups - into what correspondents say is a narco-state with key members of

the military complicit in the trade, including several army and navy chiefs

who are now on a US blacklist.

 

Experts say that the military has been widely corrupted by violent and

well-financed drug gangs - and because Guinea-Bissau is a small country, its

institutions are weak.

 

Furthermore it has a coastline that is filled with inlets, mangroves and

places to hide so it is geographically well-positioned for drugs smugglers.

 

Adm Na Tchuto - whose assets were frozen by Washington in 2010 - was

arrested after a failed coup in Guinea-Bissau in December 2011, but released

in June.

 

The current transitional government, which took over after the

military-backed coup in April 2012, does not have full international

recognition.

 

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