"Schnee" in der Sahara

[Alexander]

In den USA sind drei Afrikaner angeklagt worden, mit Drogenschmuggel das Terrornetzwerk Al Kaida finanziell unterstützen zu wollen ...

yahoo: Erstmals US-Drogenanklage gegen mutmaßliche Al-Kaida-Mitglieder

Grüsse
Alexander

[Alexander]

El Khabar - 03/01/10
"The traffic of arms and drugs offset the deficit of donors'
Exclusive interview with El Khabar, Mr. DAGUZAN Sunday, January 3, 2010

What do you read the events that occurred in the Sahel and specifically those related to the kidnappings of Western nationals and their consequences?

issikta.blogspot via google translate: "The traffic of arms and drugs offset the deficit of donors'

Grüsse
Alexander

[Alexander]

The CIA in packages of 57 Malian accused of drug trafficking

The CIA, the Secret Service of the United States is on the heels of 57 Malians suspected of involvement in international networks of drug trafficking, reports the Malian private daily Les Echos in its release this Thursday.

Police sources or diplomatic encountered by Xinhua neither confirmed nor denied this information.

According to the newspaper, without citing any source, 57 people whose names were given to Malian authorities are senior managers and directors of the private sector involved in drug trafficking.

Since the case "Air Cocaine", the name of the Venezuelan aircraft intentionally burning northeast Mali by its occupants to remove any evidence of drug trafficking, Mali is on the red list of transit hubs.

"Long before this case (Air cocaine), a network of South American drug traffickers arrested by the regime of Moussa Dadis Camara (Guinea) had its ramifications in Mali. The prosecution, which had extended to our countries (Mali) was nipped in the bud, "understands Voices. In the opinion of the newspaper, the Malian recently arrested in Ghana after a trap for U.S. intelligence is evidence that reinforce the many accusations against Mali.

"Mali, increasingly in the sights of the CIA and foreign intelligence services as the French DGSE, has every interest to clarify the situation of the 57 suspects," concludes the daily.

Quelle: Issikta -Touaregs

Grüsse
Alexander

[Alexander]

In the throes of hostages, a Panamanian cargo plane with a cargo of cocaine found a way to land in Mali. While the Sahel teeming with Western intelligence agencies and is under scrutiny by satellite! A case could complicate the situation in this area totally insecure ...

issikta.blogspot via google translate: Al-Qaeda Maghreb between hostages and cocaine

Grüsse
Alexander

[Birgitt]

Mauritania's liaison officer to Interpol is among several people sent to jail over cocaine trafficking. Police commissioner Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya was sentenced to seven years in prison for "not acting on a crime brought to his attention". A French citizen was jailed for 15 years, along with five Mauritanians. Prosecutors said the men had tried to build a desert runway to import cocaine. West Africa is now a major hub for smuggling drugs to Europe ...

Mauritania police chief jailed over cocaine ring
12.02.2010 - BBC

Gruß
Birgitt

[Birgitt]

Cocaine shipped to West Africa by Latin American drug cartels is now being traded for arms, the U.N.'s drug czar said Monday — an exchange of contraband that is especially dangerous in a region now home to cells of an al-Qaida-linked terror group. Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, says "there is more than just spotty evidence" indicating a link between drug traffickers and terror groups. "And before this becomes a very serious problem, it has to be dealt with and nipped in the bud," Costa said in an interview with The Associated Press, on the sidelines of a seven-nation drug summit in the Senegalese capital of Dakar ...

UN: Cocaine being traded for arms in West Africa
15.02.2010 - AP

Gruß
Birgitt

[Alexander]

Südamerika, Westafrika – beides weit weg. Nicht jedoch im Drogengeschäft. Neben regem Handel mit Waffen zwischen den beiden Regionen steigt nach Angaben der UN-Drogenbehörde auch der Konsum mit Rauschgift in Afrika. Und das Kokain Europas – das kommt ebenfalls von dort ...

n-tv: UN-Drogenbehörde warnt: Kartelle fördern Waffenhandel

Grüsse
Alexander

[Alexander]

Mauritanian soldiers killed three armed men and took 18 prisoner after attempting to stop a convoy in the remote northeast of the country, army sources told Reuters on Saturday ...

alertnet: Mauritanian army kills 3 in attack on armed convoy

Grüsse
Alexander

[Birgitt]

Hit by a global crackdown on their wealthy financiers, Bin Laden's followers have been forced to abandon their Koranic principles to pursue their holy war. The three al-Qaeda agents assured the Colombians that they would have no problem moving their shipment of European-bound cocaine through the Islamist badlands of the Sahara. As supporters of the terrorist organisation's North African branch, they would guarantee shipment of the drugs through territory they controlled - so long as they were paid fee of $2,000 per kilo. The trio, all from the impoverished desert nation of Mali, thought they were setting up a deal with representatives of Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrillas to smuggle up to 1,000 kgs of cocaine ...

Cocaine, kidnapping and the Al-Qaeda cash squeeze
06.03.2010 - Telegraph

Gruß
Birgitt

[schu achbar ?]

Es gibt auch Schnee aus der Sahara:
""Ein kurioses Wetterphänomen gab es unterdessen in Bulgarien. Dort fiel gelber Schnee.
Sand aus der Sahara mischte sich unter den Schnee. Meteorologen erklärten das seltene Naturereignis mit einem Zyklon aus der Sahara, der über das Land fegte. Aufgrund der Schneemassen kam es auch hier zu Stromausfällen. Zahlreiche Autos blieben in der weißen Pracht stecken, wie das Staatsradio berichtete. In mehreren Gemeinden im Südosten des Landes wurde der Notstand ausgerufen.""
Quelle Bild(ja, ich weiss..)

"Don`t eat yellow snow ..." bekommt da eine ganz andere Bedeutung...

[Birgitt]

Die Zahl ist atemberaubend: In den vergangenen 40 Jahren haben allein die USA nach Schätzungen des Magazins Time unvorstellbare 2500 Milliarden Dollar für den "War on Drugs" ausgegeben; so wird der Kampf gegen die Drogen seit den Tagen des US-Präsidenten Richard Nixon genannt. Die Bilanz ist freilich ernüchternd. Das illegale, todbringende Geschäft mit Rauschgift verspricht nach wie vor exorbitante Gewinne. Die UN schätzen den jährlichen Umsatz auf 400 Milliarden Dollar. Die weltweit gehandelte Menge wird dabei auf 730 Tonnen Heroin und 850 Tonnen Kokain taxiert ...

Gigantisches Geschäft: Der Weg des Opiums
11.03.2010 - Frankfurter Rundschau, mit interaktiver Karte

Gruß
Birgitt

[Birgitt]

At an airport on Mexico's Pacific coast sits one of the most curious air fleets ever assembled. Dozens of confiscated drug planes sit wing to wing on the tarmac, parked here by Mexican authorities who are trying to knock the drug cartels out of the air with U.S. help [...] And smugglers are now crossing the Atlantic Ocean in order to move cocaine through Africa and into Europe. "For a while, they've been pushing small amounts (across the Atlantic) to test the system and see how it works. But they seem to have reached a breakthrough," said Douglas Farah, an expert on smuggling at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a Washington think tank ...

As drug planes get seized, cartels adapt
17.03.2010 - Arizona Republic

Gruß
Birgitt

[Birgitt]

A court in Mauritania has charged 20 people with being part of a drug-trafficking group linked to al-Qaeda's North African wing. They were also charged with supporting the perpetrators of terrorist acts. The arrests were made in late February after a gun battle when a convoy was stopped near the Mali border by the Mauritanian military. The army killed three people and seized the vehicles carrying the drugs, the AFP news agency reports. Sources told the agency the drugs seized were cannabis and cocaine ...

Mauritania charges link al-Qaeda to drug trafficking
30.03.2010 - BBC

Gruß
Birgitt

[Birgitt]

The judicial and security authorities in Mauritania on Wednesday at 45 kilometres north of Nouakchott destroyed 9.5 tonnes of marijuana, APA learns from reliable sources in the Mauritanian capital city. This quantity of drugs was seized on February 26 during a clash between the Mauritanian army and a convoy of several vehicles flanked by a score of armed men in the north, near the border with Mali. Three traffickers were killed and 18 others captured, the Mauritanian army announced. Since this incident, the Mauritanian opposition always wondered about what had become of the drug, suggesting that it could have been resold outside the country ...

Mauritania destroys more than 9 tonnes of drugs
01.04.2010 - APA

Gruß
Birgitt

[Birgitt]

A fusion of illicit money-making and radical politics is turning the big empty spaces of the western half of the Sahara into a profound security challenge, says Stephen Ellis for openDemocracy. It is not often that the words “cocaine” and “al-Qaida” are plausibly linked. But these two forces are turning the western half of the Sahara – approximately from southern Libya to the Atlantic coast - into a locus of illicit money-making and radical politics. The development, quite a feat for a sparsely populated region, presents a challenge that the rich states to the north cannot afford to ignore ...

The Sahara's New Cargo: Drugs and Radicalism
16.04.2010 - ISN

Gruß
Birgitt