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Kenya: Narcotics - a Raw Nerve That No One Dares Touch
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
23 March 2008
Posted to the web 24 March 2008
Athman Amran
Nairobi
When investigating the multi-billion shilling narcotics business in Coast Province, one is met with authorities' conspiracy of silence.
There is a lot of suspicion and fear as some people warn that the probe is a dangerous affair.
Kenya is an important transit route for Southwest Asian hashish and heroin dealers. Europe is the primary market and North America the secondary destination.
Eastern Africa representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Mr Carsten Hyttel, once remarked that South American traffickers had moved into Kenya.
This was after the tightening of law enforcement in Spain, which was once a main transit point for cocaine headed to Europe.
When The Sunday Standard was investigating the suspected routes and methods used to smuggle hard drugs into the country, the Coast Provincial Criminal Investigation Officer, Mr Bernard Mate, expressed suspicion and mistrust.
We were questioned about what we had learnt from our investigations.
We met hostility at the Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA), which registers private speedboats.
A senior KMA officer, who declined to give his name, threatened to call the police after we inquired about speedboats and their link in drugs trafficking.
But another officer said the authority did not know how many speedboats were in the country.
"We are doing some baseline survey and after compiling the data, we will post it on our website," the officer said.
Such records could help in tracing the owners of boats involved in illicit trade.
Private speedboats, some of them luxurious, dot almost the entire coastline - from South Coast, the Mombasa Island, Mtwapa, Kilifi, Malindi all the way to Lamu.
Private speedboats face trade competition from private jetties.
It is suspected that the porous small seaports - from Vanga on the Kenya-Tanzania border in South Coast to Lamu in the North- are used to not only smuggle hard drugs but also some counterfeit goods and guns.
Speedboats have been in this trade for a while.
Slain drug baron, Ibrahim Akasha, used a speedboat in the trade. The Government later confiscated the vessel.
A speedboat was also used in the Sh6.4 billion-drug haul, part of which was located at a Malindi villa in December 14, 2004.
Some of the suspected entry points are Bodo, Kinondo - where a major drug consignment was discovered in 1997 - Shimoni and Majoreni.
The Mombasa Old Port on Mombasa Island, Mtwapa Creek, and areas bordering some North Coast hotels, especially where access to the beach is difficult for fishermen and police, are also entry points.
Others are in Kanamai area, Kikambala, Bofa, Tezo and Kilifi beach, Watamu, Malindi, Ngomeni, Mambrui and along the beaches of some islands in Lamu.
Entry points
The Sunday Standard visited some of the suspected entry points and talked to the locals, especially fishermen.
At Ngomeni, villagers say there are some days when there is a flurry of activity at night involving speedboats and some huge sea vessels.
When there is such activity, some lorries are always on standby while the owners of the consignments arrive in big expensive cars to ensure everything goes on smoothly.
When we visited one of the suspected notorious entry points of smuggled goods and drugs at daytime, it was quiet and deserted. We only found a few fishermen and some young boys who were swimming.
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"Some big ships usually anchor in the high seas. Small boats are used to reach them," a Ngomeni resident said.
But no one is sure what kind of activity goes on between the owners of the big vessels in the high seas and the small speedboats.
Ordinary fishing boats are used in the smuggling business sometimes, it is alleged.
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