Angolan cocaine couriers jailed for 5 years

A FIVE-YEAR prison term is the lot of three Angolan cocaine couriers who were caught smuggling drugs into Namibia in their intestines last year.

The three drug mules had swallowed the cocaine during visits to Brazil, before they boarded flights that eventually brought them to Hosea Kutako International Airport east of Windhoek, where they were then arrested on drug charges.The youngest of them, André Marciano Bouissa (19), was sentenced in the Windhoek Regional Court yesterday. His sentencing follows 11 days after two female Angolans, Chantel Miama (36) and Ania Minga Alfonso (29), were also sentenced on cocaine charges in the Windhoek Regional Court.Magistrate Sarel Jacobs sentenced Bouissa to an effective five years’ imprisonment. Miama and Alfonso, who were sentenced by Magistrate Leopold Hangalo on September 17, were also sent to jail for an effective five years each.Bouissa pleaded guilty to a charge of dealing in dangerous dependence-producing drugs on August 25. He admitted that on July 16 last year he smuggled about 1,013 kilograms of cocaine, which has a local street market value of about N$506 600, into Namibia.Miama and Alfonso both pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of dangerous dependence-producing drugs on September 3.Miama admitted that she brought about 613 grams of cocaine, valued at about N$306 500, into Namibia on November 16 last year. Alfonso admitted that she was caught with about 660,9 grams of swallowed cocaine, valued at about N$330 400, inside her intestines after she had arrived in Namibia on December 7 last year.Bouissa told the court he was in Brazil to buy clothes for the business he was conducting in Angola when he agreed to carry the cocaine back to Angola on behalf of someone else.Miama told Magistrate Hangalo she was in Brazil with her employer, whose children she was looking after, when she was abandoned and left in a difficult situation. She said she then met someone who suggested that she should carry the drugs back to Angola with her.’I wanted to get some money and take care of my family,’ she told the magistrate.When Alfonso was asked why she agreed to swallow and transport the drugs, she answered: ‘I did it because I am the sole breadwinner in the family and I wanted to get some money out of it.’Miama and Alfonso both have two children, Magistrate Hangalo was also told.Both magistrates stressed the seriousness of the offences the Angolans had pleaded guilty to when they sentenced them.Magistrate Hangalo said he was accepting that the two women had shown remorse to the court by pleading guilty and taking the court into their confidence.He also told them that any law-abiding citizen would not want to live in a society that is being ruined by the use of drugs. For that reason, the courts have a duty to protect the country’s people from being exploited by unscrupulous criminals involved in the drugs trade, he said.He sentenced the two women to seven years’ imprisonment each, with two years of that sentence suspended for a period of five years on condition they are not convicted of committing the same crime during the period of suspension.Magistrate Jacobs told Bouissa yesterday that although he was still in his youth – 18 years old – when he committed his crime, and although he was acting under the influence of the person who had asked him to transport the drugs, he had to expect to be held accountable for his crime. At the age of 18 he was not a child any more, and the court was sure he considered his actions and the consequences of it when he swallowed the cocaine, the magistrate said.He sentenced Bouissa to an eight-year prison term, of which three years were conditionally suspended for a period of five years.The three Angolans have all been in custody since their arrest last year.