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Kenya major drug route - UN
01/03/2007 22:34 - (SA)
Nairobi - European cocaine habits are increasingly fed through African nations and the Kenyan capital is the major transit point for trafficking the drug by air, said the United Nations drug watchdog on Thursday.
"Cocaine is smuggled by air into Europe via cities in eastern Africa, mainly Nairobi," said the UN's International Narcotics Control Board in its 2006 annual report on drug-trafficking trends.
"Significant seizures of heroin" are regularly made at airports in Kenya, Mauritius, Ethiopia and Tanzania, said the report.
Police seized a 1.1-ton cache of cocaine in December 2004 with a street value of about $88m, one of Africa's biggest drug seizures to date.
Several Kenya Airways employees were caught soon after, smuggling the drug into London's Heathrow Airport, raising fears of how some of the cocaine had escaped from police custody.
Thursday's report said trafficking networks took advantage of the region's weak interdiction capacity and lack of officers trained to investigate narcotics.
Kenya's assistant minister of health, Dr Wilfred Machage, told a news conference: "A lack of adequate funds and specialists... is contributing to Kenya becoming a major route for heroin and cocaine trafficking."
Diplomats say corruption among police and customs agents makes Kenya an attractive destination for smugglers.
- Reuters
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