White expatriates used as drug mules

Kenyan drug traffickers are recruiting white expatriates living in the country to smuggle the drugs into Western capitals and paying them huge sums of money.

In a cable dated September 26, 2008 detailing the drugs situation in Kenya, US ambassador Michael Ranneberger said the Kenyan drug lords were paying the couriers up to 6,000 US dollars (about Sh500,000) per trip and make over five such trips to Western cities every year.

“Drug traffickers in Kenya are mainly recruiting white expatriate residents of Kenya and Uganda as mules because they are believed to attract less attention from western law enforcement authorities,” the envoy wrote.

The drug lords were at times also recruiting non-white Kenyans who possess valid US visas, he added.

“For example, in April a middle-aged Kenyan employee of the Peace Corps, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport carrying 2 kilogrammes of heroin and convicted of trafficking,” Mr Ranneberger wrote.

He said that the couriers normally travel business class and take indirect routes to their destinations, for example through Nairobi-Zurich-Berlin-London instead of using the more commonly used Nairobi-London route, he said.

The envoy said European authorities had intercepted 12 couriers including two Americans who had travelled through the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Each was carrying an average of three to ten kilogrammes of narcotics, mostly cocaine, he explained.

He reported that a meeting convened by the British High Commission in Nairobi on November 21, 2007 had been told that drug trafficking continued to grow in Kenya because of a myriad reasons, including lack of capacity and training on the part of the police to combat the trade.