DAKAR, (Reuters) – U.S. anti-drugs agents who snared Guinea-Bissau’s former Navy chief in a high-seas sting last week were also targeting the head of the West African state’s army, sources familiar with the operation told Reuters.
Guinea-Bissau General Antonio Indjai – widely seen as the coup-prone nation’s most powerful man – declined to meet undercover agents in international waters where he had been told he could seal a lucrative deal to smuggle cocaine and supply weapons to Colombian rebels, sources said.
“He did not take the bait,” said one of the sources with direct knowledge of the April 2 sting, in which former Navy chief Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto – labeled a drugs kingpin by the U.S. Treasury Department – was arrested.
Guinea Bissau’s military has long been accused of involvement in narcotics trafficking, using a jigsaw puzzle of mangrove-lined islands as cover against the region’s notoriously weak law enforcement.
The capture of Na Tchuto – who prosecutors say was successfully lured offshore on the promise of a $1 million payoff for transhipping 1,000 kg of cocaine – marked one of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s biggest successes in Africa, a region it says is increasingly used by smugglers moving Latin American drugs to users in the United States and Europe.
An estimated 50 tons of cocaine move through West Africa every year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, most of it heading north to European cities, where they are worth almost $2 billion on the streets.
A spokesman for the U.S. Drugs Enforcement Adminis-tration declined to comment on the sting operation. A spokesman for Bissau’s interim government, reached by telephone for comment about Indjai, said he would not answer any questions. The government has previously denied any links to trafficking.
Na Tchuto, who is in detention in New York awaiting trial on a charge he conspired to smuggle cocaine to the United States, has previously denied involvement in the drugs trade.
Indjai seized control of Guinea Bissau in a coup last April before handing power the following month to a transitional government led by civilian president Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo, in a deal brokered by West African regional bloc ECOWAS.
The European Union and the CPLP (Comunidade dos Paises de Lingua Portuguesa) grouping of Portuguese speaking nations have since refused to recognize Nhamadjo’s administration, saying it remains under the control of military officials involved in the drugs trade.
‘HIGH VALUE TARGET’
Undercover informants for the U.S. Drugs Enforcement Administration had met with Indjai, Na Tchuto, and several other suspected traffickers several times since the middle of 2012 to set up the sting operation, according to the source.
Na Tchuto initially balked at the undercover informants’ request he meet them offshore beyond the Bijagos Islands on the morning of April 2, first sending one of his aides before going out himself later in the day.
Indjai was meant to take a boat offshore separately a few hours later to handle the weapons side of the deal but became suspicious, according to one of the sources, who had direct knowledge of the sting as it was happening.
Another source, who was briefed by officials involved in the American operation, confirmed that Indjai had been targeted.
Na Tchuto’s arrest sent shockwaves through the former Portuguese colony as it tries to organise elections to replace its fragile caretaker government.
