Senegal-Mali drug cartel collapses

Senegal is virtually becoming the favourite transit entry for drug trafficking in West Africa. After the record cocaine seizure in Mbour, the Malian paramilitary police (gendarmerie) have dismantled a network that was using a computer cleared of its content to regularly carry drug from Bamako (Mali) to Dakar, Senegal.

Every week,  Issa Sacko the drug dealer who fell into the Malian police net would use goods train to take the same computer to his correspondent in the Senegalese capital that was in charge of sending it back to him.

Puzzled by the endless movement of the same computer between Bamako and Dakar, the Malian paramilitary police began tailing the man who identified himself as personal computer dealers.
 
When arrested last 25 June, some 7.5 kg of Indian hemp were found in Sacko’s computer instead of electronic parts. The alleged trafficker was remanded at the same time as one of his suspected accomplices. However, the Malian paramilitary police have so far failed to identify the quantity of the drug the computer managed to deliver through the clever means devised by the traffickers.

Despite the "crackdown" of the security forces to curb drug-trafficking, the scourge is still ever increasing, some Malian complained. As the same paramilitary police found this other means of using the ICTs, their Senegalese fellows bumped into a sail boat left at sea with more than a ton of cocaine.
 
Security forces were again surprised when the inquiries for the owner(s) led them to a secret hideout containing 1, 224 kg of cocaine. On the whole, more than two tons of hard drug were found by the Senegalese security forces between Friday and Sunday. In both cases, the drug was found in a highly tourist area on the Atlantic façade.

The two hauls are valued at over FCFA140 billion which is slightly lower than the amount needed by Dakar to end the regular blackouts affecting the power supply.

So far, the investigations have led to the arrest of a Colombian national, an Ecuadorian, a Venezuelan and two Senegalese, the paramilitary police revealed.