Guinea-Bissau Embalo accuses convicted drug baron over failed coup
Friday February 11 2022
Guinea-Bissau's President Umaro Sissoco Embalo. He accused a former Guinean navy chief with links to the drug trade and two accomplices of being behind a failed coup in the west African nation on February 1, 2022. PHOTO | REUTERS
Guinea-Bissau's President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on Thursday accused a former Guinean navy chief with links to the drug trade and two accomplices of being behind a failed coup in the west African nation on February 1.
Heavily armed men attacked government buildings in the capital Bissau while Embalo was chairing a cabinet meeting.
Embalo, 49, later told reporters that he had escaped the five-hour gun battle unharmed and that 11 people had been killed in the fighting.
On Thursday, he named former rear admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, who was head of the navy in the early 2000s, among three men he said had been arrested over the attack.
He named the other two as Tchamy Yala, also a former officer, and Papis Djeme, and said all three had been arrested.
Embalo linked the attack on government buildings to the transatlantic drug trade.
The former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau is a hub for the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America into Africa.
"The hands holding the guns are people with links to the big drug cartels," Embalo claimed
The US Drug Enforcement Administration arrested the three men named by the president over drug trafficking but they have since returned to the Western Africa country.
In April 2013, navy chief Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto was lured into an intelligence trap set by agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency, who arrested him on the high seas in international waters, making his extradition merely a formality.
Bubo Na Tchuto provided US authorities with important information and names of key players in the trade. He was consequently released from prison soon after his court conviction, so that he could return to Guinea-Bissau.
Tchamy Yala and Papis Djemé were sentenced in 2014 also in New York, to five and six and a half years in prison respectively.
Drug trafficking, corruption, and related crimes pose a serious challenge to the capability of Guinea-Bissau to progress on a path of democracy, good governance, and legitimate free market development, the US Department of State says.
The DEA officers posing as traffickers said the men had attempted to negotiate a deal to import cocaine into Guinea-Bissau and then redirect it to North America and Europe.
Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto was described by the DEA as a drug baron.
All three returned to Guinea-Bissau after their release.