Fighting tide at African drugs portal

ACCRA - A plain-clothes narcotics officer scans the packed departure hall of Accra's airport to spot the drugs couriers among hundreds of passengers on their way to Europe.

"Sometimes you can tell who is carrying drugs by the way they are sitting," he says.

Two days ago, officials at Ghana's main airport caught a man who had swallowed more than 1kg of cocaine. They nicknamed him "80-foot container", for his ability to stomach 110 of the 10g pellets.

"We are looking for suspicious people and behaviour, fraudulent documents," said the officer at Kotoka International Airport in Ghana's capital, one of many transit points for drugs smuggled through West Africa by criminal networks.

Young men who look too poor to be travelling to Europe or people whose accents do not match the nationality of their passports are obvious suspects. In practice, however, virtually any of the travellers could be carriers.

Drug control staff were given information about half a dozen couriers expected on tonight's flights to Europe. Two passengers had already been taken for stomach x-rays. Both were found to be "travelling empty".

But couriers whose x-rays show bags of drugs in their stomachs are held in an airport detention centre until they pass their packages - known as "laying their eggs".

African couriers are attracted to the job by a free flight, a new life in a wealthier country or simply hard cash.

"Professional couriers will not settle for anything less than €4000 ($7865)," said Moses Othniel Moses, of Ghana's Narcotics Control Board. "But fresh couriers are in dire need and will settle for anything."

A lot of the heroin that used to go through neighbouring Ivory Coast - split in two since 2002 by war - now goes through Ghana, said Antonio Mazzitelli, the UN's Drug and Crime representative for West and Central Africa.

"Nobody knows how much goes through West Africa. There are strong indications that the role of West Africa as a transit and stockpiling base has increased a lot."

Ghana's combination of good flight connections - there are six flights to Europe a night from Accra - and relative stability make it a natural choice for drug traffickers.

"Like any business, they depend on political stability," Othniel Moses said.

But he added that the drug team's efforts were paying off. The team seized 616kg of cocaine and 71.5kg of heroin in 2004, a dramatic increase on the 17g of cocaine and 7.8kg of heroin they confiscated four years earlier.

"Even reported small but frequent seizures as it is in Ghana affect the organisers. They hit their expected profit and act as an economic disincentive.

Yet while nearly 200 people were arrested in 2004 for cocaine and heroin offences, few have been convicted.

Many offer bribes of thousands of dollars on arrest to ensure escape. Those that do end up in a courtroom frequently get bail - small money in the big-money world of drugs trafficking - and then quickly disappear.

The most high-profile Ghanaian drugs arrest last year was not in Accra but New York, where Ghanaian MP Eric Amoateng is facing trial on drug trafficking charges.

In some cases couriers promise traditional priests never to say who gave them the drugs, a sure fire guarantee of secrecy in a part of the world where voodoo and witchcraft are widespread.

Often couriers just don't know the real identity of the people they work for, said state lawyer Rebecca Adjalo.

Adjalo said society's relaxed attitude to drugs-related offences was a constant frustration in her work.

Officials take bribes and couriers are sacrificed because it is easier to let the masterminds go free, she said.

"They don't see it like murder or rape. The market is not here, it is elsewhere. Why deprive the economy of money? They don't think it harms anybody."

- REUTERS