Radiotelevisao Caboverdiana reported late Thursday that Rear Adm. Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto and four other Guinea-Bissau nationals were apprehended aboard a yacht in international waters in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. The operation code named lightening was carried out by a unit of the DEA fast, which is part of their Drug Flow Attack Strategy. Bubo Na Tchuto was lured to the Yacht by a fake drug deal set up by DEA informants, after his arrest he was taken to the port of Palmeira, on Sal Island where a DEA jet was waiting, he was immediately sent to the U.S. US DEA undercover agents had been present in Guinea-Bissau for two weeks and that it was probably these agents who had been involved in the capture. Bubo Na Tchuto’s wife said she had not seen her husband since Wednesday and that her requests to military high command for information on his whereabouts had drawn a blank. “He left the house (on Wednesday) as usual in his car to do some shopping in town and he hasn't been back since.
Rear Adm. Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto and two other Guinea-Bissau citizens Papis Djeme and Tchamy Yala (nephew of Ex President Kumba Yala) were taken into custody Tuesday aboard a vessel in international waters in the eastern Atlantic Ocean while two others , Manuel Mamadi and Mane, Saliu Sisse, were arrested Thursday in Guinea-Conakry and later transferred to U.S. custody. Na Tchuto was charged with conspiring to import narcotics into the United States. Mane and Sisse both come from military backgrounds and had recently travelled to Dakar with high ranking military officials to open a bank account to facilitate future shipments. Bubo was also in Dakar around the same time, supposedly to visit a private clinic for a unrelated health issue.
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During tape recorded meetings, Mane, Sisse and Garavito-Garcia agreed to arrange the purchase of weapons for FARC, including surface to air missiles, importing them to Guinea-Bissau as if they were to be used by the Guinea-Bissau army .
Mane, Sisse and Garavito-Garcia were also charged with conspiring to sell weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, to be used to protect FARC cocaine processing operations in Colombia against U.S. military forces. The arrests were the culmination of a long-standing undercover operation in Guinea-Bissau and elsewhere, the DEA said.
Na Tchuto, Djeme and Yala were detained Tuesday in international waters near Cape Verde, off the West African coast, the DEA said, while Mane and Sisse were arrested in a Guinea-Conakry two days later and handed over to U.S. authorities. They were then flown to the United States.
The arrests were made based on evidence gathered by confidential sources who posed as representatives or associates of the FARC as they communicated with the defendants beginning last summer, authorities said. Prosecutors said the evidence includes a series of audio recordings and videotaped meetings between June 2012 and November of last year in Guinea-Bissau. These recordings may also implicate high ranking military officers in the current junta in Bissau.
According to court papers, the defendants agreed to receive multiple ton shipments of cocaine off the coast of Guinea-Bissau and to store the cocaine in storage houses there prior to their shipment to the United States. The U.S. government alleged that the defendants also agreed that a portion of the cocaine would be used to pay Guinea-Bissau government officials to provide safe passage for the cocaine through Guineau-Bissau.
Prosecutors said Na Tchuto discussed shipping ton-quantities of cocaine from South America to Guinea Bissau by sea, saying it was a good time to transport drugs because Guinea Bissau government was weak because of a recent coup d'etat. They said he also said his fee would be $1 million per 1,000 kilograms of cocaine received in Guinea Bissau for the use of a company he owned to hide the shipments before they were moved to the United States. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
All five defendants were ordered held without bail after brief appearances in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where they seemed to struggle to understand Portuguese and creole translators.
According to a confidential source, the U.S. believes Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchutohas strong links to AQIM cells in Mauritania, Guinea Conakry, Mali and Gambia, where, it is recalled, Bubo retreated almost a year before returning clandestinely to prepare the failed April 1st coup.
The U.S. Treasury Department designated Na Tchuto as a drug kingpin in 2010 for his alleged role in the cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau, freezing any assets he might have had in the United States. For at least a decade, Guinea-Bissau has played a key role in the drug trade. The country’s archipelago of virgin islands has been used by Latin American cartels as a stopover point for ferrying cocaine to Europe, where prices have sky-rocketed at the same time that demand for cocaine levered off in North America.
Extract
Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, Guinea-Bissau's former Navy Chief of Staff, and Ibraima Papa Camara, current Air Force Chief of Staff, are both involved in narcotics trafficking in Guinea-Bissau, including being linked to an aircraft suspected of flying a multi-hundred kilogram shipment of cocaine from Venezuela to Guinea-Bissau on July 12, 2008. Na Tchuto has long been suspected of being a major facilitator of narcotics trafficking in Guinea-Bissau. In August 2008, Na Tchuto fled into exile to The Gambia, but returned to Guinea-Bissau in late December 2009 to seek refuge at the United Nations Peace-Building Support Office. In addition to his narcotics trafficking activities that form the basis for his designation, most recently, Na Tchuto was complicit in the activities surrounding the illegal detention of Guinea-Bissau's Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, and others on April 1, 2010.
Bubo Na Tchuto was a major player in the West African cocaine trade and will be an invaluable source of high value intel for the DEA. His extensive network of government officials, army officers and cartel contacts together with his 10-15 track record in the international cocaine trade could potentially enable him to broker a deal with the DEA for a lighter sentence or disappear completely into the witness protection program.
Bubo Na Tchuto's personal fortune is estimated to be between 200-250 million dollars. The Confidential Source program is an important tool used by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Confidential sources come from all walks of life and are significant to initiating investigations and providing information or services to facilitate arrests and seizures of drugs and cash. According to the DEA, it has approximately 4,000 active confidential sources at any one time.
In the eyes of the American government, Mr. Na Tchuto is a trafficking mastermind in a country that has become a global narcotics hub: the point man, for instance, when hundreds of pounds of cocaine were unloaded from a plane at the minuscule local airport two years ago.
"He was an intermediary and he was paid for his services… he was obviously in a position to look the other way and even to provide protection for these shipments as they were offloaded," Mr Bagley said.
As navy chief he would have also been able to provide protection as the drugs were directed to "European markets through a variety of different routes including private aeroplanes up to and including camel trains across the Sahel and into areas where they could cross the Mediterranean", he added.
Bubo Na Tchuto was actually the force behind the forces,” said Dr. Abdel Fatau Musah, the political director for the Economic Community of West African States, a regional bloc of nations. “The fact that he is controlling things is very unpleasant for the region.”
As Mr. Na Tchuto rides around this crumbling West African capital in an outsize pick-up truck flanked by a personal guard of soldiers, offering his booming greeting to well-wishers. The president is still nominally in charge, but officials in the region worry that the nation has effectively fallen into the hands of Mr. Na Tchuto.
Afterwards he managed to escape and was found hiding out in the unlikeliest of places — living in the United Nations building here, sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a United Nations office and sometimes eating in the canteen.
As Mr. Na Tchuto took refuge at the United Nations building, the secretary general’s representative in Bissau, Joseph Mutaboba, was reassuring the Security Council in New York that “conditions were now in place for political stability” in the country and that Guinea-Bissau was on a “journey towards peace, democracy and prosperity,” according to a Security Council announcement from March 5.
In an interview, Mr. Mutaboba said his fugitive guest, who was wanted by the government for treason, had been given sanctuary only reluctantly. The United Nations said at the time that Mr. Na Tchuto stepped onto the compound uninvited and declared that his life was in danger, making it “mindful of international human rights obligations governing such situations.”
Mr. Mutaboba said there was “no sign” that Mr. Na Tchuto was plotting a coup inside the building and that his cellphones had been confiscated to prevent trouble. Still, he acknowledged that it was possible that Mr. Na Tchuto had made contact with the outside.
“You cannot read deeply into what the military are up to, especially when you have shifting, opportunistic alliances,” Mr. Mutaboba said.
Still, the sudden onslaught of soldiers had taken him by surprise, he said, as have the American government’s allegations of drug trafficking.
“There’s no material proof that I was involved in drugs,” he said angrily. “Proof, proof, proof, proof. People say I am a criminal! I am a patriot!” he said, boasting about his service during the country’s war of liberation against the Portuguese in the 1960s and 1970s, which he said he joined at the age of 14.
For the United Nations, his presence in the multi story headquarters on a rutted road here has been a source of discomfort, both before and after the coup.
“The whole international community here was astonished at the U.N. behaviour ” a Western diplomat in Bissau said. “They didn't understand why they were harbouring such a character. He was not just sitting there watching television.”
Paulo Gorjão, director of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security in Lisbon, goes even further: “He was under the protection of the U.N., planning a coup against the government. It was perfect.”
Hours after the coup, Mr. Na Tchuto appeared with his ally, Gen. Antonio Indjai, the new army chief, at a news conference introducing the country’s new bosses. Mr. Na Tchuto, who had been navy chief of staff under a previous government, did not get his old job back, but he still plays a very influential, if officially somewhat nebulous, role.
It was a stunning reversal for a man who had spent over a year in exile in Gambia, accused by those then leading Guinea-Bissau of plotting a coup against them. Mr. Na Tchuto sneaked back into the country on a fishing boat shortly after Christmas last year. It appears that he may of been helped to escape from detention in The Gambia by members of a South American Drug Cartel. Members of that cartel were recently sentenced to fifty years hard labour for drug trafficking over $1 billion worth of cocaine.
By turns genial and explosive, Mr. Na Tchuto appeared hurt by the American accusations, insisting that he admired America deeply, had dreamed about President Obama and had a large American flag in his living room.
“I ask the Americans to help establish justice and peace in this country,” he said, noting the history of instability here. There have been at least seven successful or attempted coups since independence in 1974, and in the last 12 years 4 presidents, 4 acting presidents and 11 prime ministers.
Mr. Na Tchuto deflected a question about whether he was now the real boss in Guinea-Bissau, saying through his lawyer that he “ didn't want to offend” the current president and army chief of staff by responding.
Others here are more blunt. “Bubo Na Tchuto has power, and he has money — and we know he has money from drugs — and he has a lot of people behind him,” said Idrissa Djaló, a leading businessman and former presidential candidate. “And so the situation is uncontrollable.”
At his hearing on the lingering treason charges Mr. Na Tchuto looked relaxed, showing up with his military guard and joking on the front porch of the military tribunal building with the officers who were going to judge him. It was all a mere “formality,” he said later.
A small crowd gathered across the street to stare at Mr. Na Tchuto in his navy blue admiral’s uniform. Everybody knew who he was. “He is a great chief,” murmured a man looking on, Do Geloso, a tailor. “He’s got the power.”