Guinea-Bissau police seize nearly 3 tons of cocaine on plane from Venezuela

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau (AP) — Police in Guinea-Bissau seized 2.6 tons of cocaine last weekend on a plane that arrived in the West African country’s capital, Bissau, from Venezuela, judicial police said on Monday.

Agents seized 78 bales of drugs smuggled in a Gulfstream IV plane during a raid at Osvaldo Vieira International Airport in Bissau on Saturday afternoon, police said in a statement.

The five-member crew, including two Mexicans and citizens of Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil, were arrested, including the pilot.

Cocaine seizures are becoming more common in West AfricaAccording to a UN report published earlier this year, the region has become a major transit hub for drugs from Latin America and southwest Asia bound for Europe.

Guinea-Bissau is particularly known as a favorite route for international drug cartels. Earlier this year, the son of the country’s former president, Malam Bacai Sanha, was sentenced to more than six years in prison by a U.S. court for running an international heroin trafficking ring.

Saturday’s seizure of cocaine was carried out in close cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center–Narcotics, a European organization, the judicial police said in their statement.

Neighbouring Senegal also announced that it had made a record-breaking cocaine seizure of 1,137 kilograms (2,506 pounds) earlier this year – the largest amount ever seized in the country and worth $146 million – near an artisanal mine in the east of the country.