Word: drugged
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When I visited Bissau in April 2007, members of the judicial police would speak to me only in secret, for fear of being attacked by drug traffickers. The small force - which had not been paid for four months - operated out of a cluster of crumbling buildings with no telephones or electricity. Four cars - the entire fleet of the judicial police - sat idle on the premises. The police had no money...
...respect the constitution." Military leaders said on Guinea-Bissau radio stations yesterday that they would follow the constitution, by allowing the head of the parliament to run the country until new elections, which are supposed to be held within 60 days. Yet with billions of dollars of illegal drug revenues in the impoverished country some political analysts predict that instability will continue. "Rivalries over control of narcotics trafficking may be at the heart of the schism between military and the presidency," said Jonas Horner, Africa Associate of the Eurasia Group in Washington in a statement yesterday...
Viera had publicly criticized the drug traffickers yet seemed powerless to prevent them from opeating in his country - perhaps partly because of the involvement of some top military officers, according to regional sources. In an interview with TIME in Bissau in 2007, a high-ranking West African military officer who asked not to be named said Guinea-Bissau's government and mlitary allowed drug traffickers to operate "not because of a lack of resources but a lack of political will...
...killings come after months of turmoil among the country's neighbors, in a region which has been beset by Latin American drug traffickers, who are increasingly using West Africa as a way station for cocaine smuggling into Europe. Military officers in neighboring Guinea mounted a coup last December hours after that country's president Lansana Conte died. Conte's administration had been seen as particularly friendly to the foreign drug lords. Last week, Guinea's military coup leaders arrested several politicians and military officers in the capital Conakry, charging them with drug smuggling for the Colombian cartels. The late President...
...dirt-poor country has few natural resources and only 1.6 million people. And there are dozens of remote tropical islands, with about 24 airfields built during colonial days. There the traffickers flew small aircraft, dropping hundreds of pounds of cocaine almost weekly direct from Colombia. According to European Union drug reports, the cocaine was then smuggled in small quantities into Europe. The government in Bissau has had little means to prevent the smuggling, and almost no patrol boats with which to watch its coastline...