What a professionally organised syndicate Laye. Tahnks for sharing. It is interesting how it all coincided with Koroma's visit to Gambia. I will be heading to arrest the owner of the Jeep dealership in Town. There couldn't be many Jeep dealerships at this time in Freetown. Haruna. I encourage you to Goodsearch for The GLobal Democracy Project Raise funds for your favourite charity by using _www.goodsearch.com_ (http://www.goodsearch.com/) - powered by Yahoo In a message dated 7/15/2008 7:32:37 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: From Awareness Times Newspaper in Freetown Breaking News Cocaine Plane Impersonated the Red Cross:We have Lots of Exclusive Scoops Inside this Edition including the hitherto unknown Cocaine Speedboat...! By Jul 15, 2008, 11:08 * 48 hours on, mystery still surrounds the sudden appearance of an unidentified airplane at the tarmac of the Lungi International Airport. In the ensuing is a comprehensive report as filed in by our Internet correspondents and our local reporters. The Plane with the fake Red Cross symbol on its wing and a fake registration number of SQ2261 painted on its side * At about 3:30 a.m. of Sunday 13th July 2008 a small jet plane with a fake Red Cross Sign is said to have forced its way onto the tarmac of the Lungi International Airport allegedly without the permission of the Control Tower. The plane was later identified as a Venezuelan registered aircraft. * RED CROSS DISOWNS PLANE * In an exclusive interview with the ICRC's Communications Head, Abu Bakarr Kamara, he told this press that the ICRC is downrightly dismayed over the incident at Lungi and would want the general public and the world to know that the plane in question is not owed by the ICRC nor by the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society (SLRCS). * APC MINISTER IMPLICATED * Meanwhile, in a disturbing twist, the names of both Transport & Aviation Minister Hon. Kemoh Sesay and his younger brother Ahmed Sesay (who is the Team Manager of the National Football Team, Leone Stars) are being floated as having some knowledge of the drugs dealing. Unconfirmed information as we went to press is that Ahmed Sesay is being detained for questioning at the Police's CID. * FORCED LANDING? * According to police sources, the plane allegedly landed far away from the main terminal building in an area known as Runway 3.0 at Kasongna Gate. Immediately the plane landed, the crew members allegedly disembarked and boarded a waiting black jeep which then forced its way out of the Airport by breaking a sealed gate in the airport perimeter and driving through it. Security personnel were then alerted who later forced the plane open and found 703.5kg of Cocaine inside. When the police mounted a cordon search of the airport perimeter area, they discovered five AK47 rifles in the possession of an ex combatant named Ibrahim Kargbo. * 100 MILLION DOLLARS * According to the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, a single gram of pure cocaine was selling for around $140 last September 2007. Thus, the street value of the 703kg of Cocaine that landed at Lungi Airport last Sunday is almost $100,000,000 (One Hundred Million Dollars). This is a clear indication that the operation is not a small one but one in which very senior members of the Government and Security Agencies might be giving their blessings to. "There is no way an international drug dealer is going to risk a cache worth 100 million dollars landing into a country where he does not have some serious high level connections and protection," a retired Police Commissioner told Awareness Times. *DISAPPEARANCE OF ONE BOX * Strengthening these allegations is the fact that after the boxes had been offloaded from the plane, one of the boxes of cocaine simply disappeared from right under the noses of the security personnel. * VENEZUELA TO SALONE * Just a fortnight ago, Investigative Journalist David Blair in Caracas, published in the Telegraph Newspaper in London that a crucial change in the global pattern of narcotics smuggling is now underway. According to Blair, in the past, most narcotics from Columbia were smuggled directly to Europe but today the cocaine is more likely to be loaded onto long-range aircraft and flown across the Atlantic to small West African countries. Blair particularly cited Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone, as key transit points where the cocaine is offloaded before being shipped into Europe. Venezuela's President Chavez is accused of fully backing these operations. In 1998 - the last year before Mr. Chavez came to office - Venezuela's security forces made 11,581 drug-related arrests. By 2005, this had plummeted to only 1,082. It is also reported that last June 2007, four smugglers were arrested at the main airport on Venezuela's Margarita Island while loading 2.2 tons of cocaine onto an aircraft bound for Sierra Leone. They did not expect to be caught because senior security operatives had escorted them into the airport in Venezuela. * UMARU SITTA TURAY * It will be recalled that local journalist Umaru Sitta Turay had last year June 2007 strongly protested at a Police Briefing that he had been an eye witness to a mystery helicopter that landed at the Choithram's Hospital's Helicopter Pad from which it had offloaded strange items for well over two hours. Sitta Turay had blasted the Police that despite him making numerous calls for the police to investigate the mystery scene, not a single police officer had turned up at the scene. According to Sitta Turay, Hon. Kemoh Sesay and his younger brother, Ahmed Sesay had been present during the offloading of this mystery helicopter at Hill Station last June 2007 but the police turned a blind eye back then. * INVESTIGATION ORDERED * Meanwhile, President Koroma and his entourage landed at the Airport from an official visit to the Gambia few hours after the incident. The President upon arrival reportedly instructed that the investigation should be jointly conducted by the local United Nations Mission and the Sierra Leone Police (SLP). The immediate investigation set up is being headed on the side of the SLP by Assistant Inspector General Francis Munu under whose tireless leadership, arrests were effected that same Sunday. Initially, three of the suspects were arrested and the other three were apparently later intercepted in the Port Loko area. According to police sources, the arrested Crew constituted two Mexicans, one American, one Venezuelan, two Colombians and one Bissau Guinean. Sierra Leoneans presently helping the police in their investigations are Chernor Bah, an air traffic controller; Santos Bangura, Acting LUC Lungi Airport Police Station; O.C. Hazeley also of the Lungi Police Station; Acting Managing Director Lungi International Airport, Mr. John Brima and John Sesay, Acting Operations Manager. * 'COCAINE SPEEDBOAT' * Special Investigations by Awareness Times has revealed that at around 1:30am (two hours before the plane forcibly landed at the airport), a mystery speedboat had crossed over from Freetown into Lungi environs. The speedboat which contained six men (Four white men and two Nigerians) missed its desired target which we have learnt was the Landing Pad at Lungi Mahera used by the Diamond Hovercraft. Awareness Times interviewed a fisherman who explained that his colleagues and himself were awoken by the sound of the speedboat which had berthed a distance from the Hovercraft Pad. These passengers explained they were lost and requested for assistance. Speaking in Krio, the fisherman told Awareness Times that after they were each paid ten thousand leones, they took the speedboat to land at the Hovercraft site. He reveals that they met a brand new jeep parked at the site in the pitch darkness and with two white males sitting waiting. One male was described as "very hefty". The fisherman's story was also corroborated by a driver of the Hovercraft Bus which usually transports passengers from the landing pad to the airport. The driver, Ibrahim Kamara, explained that his house was near the landing pad and he heard the sound of the speedboat at around 1:30am. Ibrahim said he was curious as the Hovercraft had finished operations for that day and so he came out of his house and met local fishermen who had brought the Nigerians and White men over in the lost speedboat. Another eye witness to the scene is a local handyman named Brima Bah who also confirmed to this newspaper's investigators that he was woken up by the sound of the speedboat and came outside to see a brand new jeep with plastic still covered on its seats, parked at the Hovercraft landing pad. "I helped some of the strangers off the speedboat and they all got into the jeep and drove off in the direction of the airport. It was not yet 2am but it was past 1am," Bah explained to Awareness Times adding that he was given Le10,000 for his assistance. * NIGERIAN WITH €11,000 * Meanwhile, a Nigerian national known as Ofodilay Chicozee Chikeluba was arrested by the police on suspicion of being part of the drug plane saga. According to the police, the Nigerian was in possession of 11,000 Euros suspected to be for use in the operation. However, whilst in police custody (Chicozee), a Detective Police Constable, Musa Lansana who was in charge of the suspect was seen in the company of the suspect in a restaurant in town. Police have however re-arrested the suspect and Officer Lansana has also been detained for further investigations. (c) Copyright 2005, Freetown, Sierra Leone. ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ! **************Get the scoop on last night's hottest shows and the live music scene in your area - Check out TourTracker.com! 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