Ibrahim Akasha, notorious drug dealer, confidently swaggered in the town of Mombasa and his private speedboat was always openly and proudly displayed.
Kenya is an important transit route for Southwest Asian hashish and heroin dealers. Europe is the primary market and North America the secondary destination. Eastern Africa representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Mr Carsten Hyttel, once remarked that South American traffickers had moved into Kenya. This was after the tightening of law enforcement in Spain, which was once a main transit point for cocaine headed to Europe.When The Sunday Standard was investigating the suspected routes and methods used to smuggle hard drugs into the country, the Coast Provincial Criminal Investigation Officer, Mr Bernard Mate, expressed suspicion and mistrust.We were questioned about what we had learnt from our investigations.We met hostility at the Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA), which registers private speedboats.A senior KMA officer, who declined to give his name, threatened to call the police after we inquired about speedboats and their link in drugs trafficking.But another officer said th...