Guinea-Bissau police have seized 2.63 tonnes of cocaine from an airplane that arrived from Venezuela, the country’s judicial police reported. During a raid on Saturday at Bissau’s Osvaldo Vieira International Airport, authorities confiscated 78 bales of drugs smuggled in on a Gulfstream IV aircraft.
The plane’s crew of five, including the pilot, were arrested. The crew consisted of two Mexican nationals and individuals from Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. According to the police, the detainees will face interrogation before a regional court on Monday.
The raid, named “Operation Landing,” was conducted in collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center-Narcotics. West Africa is frequently used as a transit hub for cocaine smuggling from South America to Europe. This recent seizure is one of the largest recorded in recent years.
Cocaine continues to be one of the most widely consumed drugs globally, with 23 million users, as noted in the 2024 U.N. World Drug Report.
