The former counter-admiral bubo na Tchuto, designated as a baron of drugs by the US Treasury, would have been at the head of the attempted reversal of the plan on February 1st.
Le Monde with AFP
The President of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, accused Thursday, February 10, an former head of the national navy and two other men arrested in the past by the American Anti-Drug Agency (Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA). Being behind what he presents as the attempted attempted aborted of the February.
The President Embalo cited in front of the press the names of the former counter-admiral José Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, head of the Navy during the first decade of the 2000s, of Tchamy Yala, also former officer, and papis djeme . All were arrested after the events of the 1st February, said the head of state.
He presented the coup de force as directly related to drug trafficking. Guinea-Bissau, a small poor country of about two million inhabitants in West Africa, is considered a hub of cocaine trafficking from Latin America. In a country where remunerative positions are rare and disputed, many members of the armed forces, ubiquitous, pass to soak in traffic.
Guinea-Bissau was theater ten days ago, of an umpteenth force in its stirred history since the independence of Portugal in 1974. The palace of the government, headquarters of departments, was attacked That day by armed men while the president and the members of the government held a council of ministers. The president was released unscathed after hours of fire exchanges who made eleven dead, according to the government.
A baron of the drug
“I do not say it’s the politicians who are behind that, but the hand that wears weapons are related to the great drug cartels,” said President Embalo, before mentioning The names of the three men. He recalled that all three had had mesh from the American justice.
They had been arrested in April 2013 by agents of American anti-drug services aboard a boat in international waters off the West African coast. According to the American justice, they had negotiated the previous months, with American investigators from South American narcotural representatives, the importation into Guinea-Bissau cocaine that would have been redistributed in North America or Europe.
José Americo Bubo Na Tchuto had been designated as a baron of drugs by the US treasury. He had been sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison in New York. Tchamy Yala and Papi Djeme had been sentenced in 2014, in New York too, five and six and a half years in prison. They have since returned to Guinea-Bissau.
President Embalo reported that while stuck inside the government’s palace and that the fighting was raging outside, “Bubo was already in the Navy and military uniform staff. At some point, I heard one of the attackers say, “Wait, we will call it to send us reinforcements” “.
