Bissau, Guinea-Bissau – Guinea-Bissau has turned over four convicted Latin American drug smugglers to US drug enforcement authority DEA, which has transferred them to the United States, the president and a judicial said Thursday.
Courts in the west African nation sentenced the defendants — two Mexicans, a Colombian and an Ecuadorian — to 17 years behind bars in January.
Political instability and poverty in Guinea-Bissau have encouraged drug traffickers to use the territory as a transit zone for moving cocaine from Latin America to Europe and beyond.
“They have been handed to DEA agents and were transferred to the United States… though there is no extradition accord between Guinea-Bissau and the United States. Matters were arranged through judicial cooperation,” a judicial source requesting anonymity told AFP.
President Umaro Sissoco Embalo confirmed the information to AFP following a Thursday cabinet meeting.
“The United States approached us and the government has decided, jointly with them, to transfer them,” Embalo said.
“As you know, there is no proper prison here to keep these people… We don’t have a high-security prison. With this gesture, we want to show the world that Guinea-Bissau is no longer a narco-state.
“If we arrest a trafficker, if he is wanted elsewhere, we will hand him over,” he said.
One alleged trafficker, Brazilian Mario Alberto Balcacar, died in custody in early March. His body is awaiting repatriation.
He and the other four were arrested in September 2024 in Bissau with 2.6 tonnes of cocaine brought in by air from Venezuela.
Military officials in the small Portuguese-speaking west African state have several times been named in recent trafficking cases.
Malam Bacai Sanha Jr, the son of a former president, was sentenced 13 months ago to a long US jail term for involvement in international heroin trafficking.
According to US authorities, Sanha hoped the trafficking proceeds would enable him to finance a coup aimed at installing him as president.
© Agence France-Presse
