Angolan in court on cocaine count

AN 18-year-old Angolan citizen has become the latest suspect to appear in a Namibian court in connection with a wave of arrests of alleged cocaine couriers who are charged with bringing drugs into Namibia.

According to the Namibian Police’s Public Relations and Liaison Division, the suspect was arrested at Hosea Kutako International Airport on Thursday last week after he was allegedly found to have 111 cocaine ‘bullets’ – plastic-wrapped capsules of the drug – in his stomach.The 18-year-old suspect, Marciano André Bouissa, appeared in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court in Katutura on a charge of dealing in dangerous dependence-producing drugs on Monday.Magistrate Cosmos Endjala postponed Bouissa’s case to October 12, and ordered that he should remain in custody until then.Bouissa is alleged to have brought 1,5 kilograms of cocaine, valued at N$750 000, into Namibia when he arrived at the airport on a flight from Johannesburg. It is claimed that he had earlier travelled from Brazil to Johannesburg by air as well.Testifying in another cocaine-dealing trial in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court yesterday, the Commanding Officer of the Namibian Police’s Drug Law Enforcement Unit, Detective Chief Inspector Barry de Klerk, said 16 foreign nationals had been arrested in Namibia over the past three months for trying to smuggle cocaine into the country in the form of swallowed ‘bullets’ of the drug.These arrests have taken place in Windhoek and at Walvis Bay and Katima Mulilo, which demonstrates how widely-spread the activities of drug mules entering Namibia have become, he said.De Klerk said the Police have bought similar ‘bullets’ of cocaine inside Namibia in under-cover operations, which indicates that the drugs entering the country in this form are not merely in transit through Namibia, but are also being put on the domestic market.Four Angolan nationals who were part of the first group of foreign drug couriers to be caught carrying cocaine into Namibia inside their digestive systems on April 15 were sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment each when their trial ended in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court on June 30.