Breaking up Mombasa’s drug cartels

DRUGS-CHASE; Old Town Area Chief Ahmewd Abdulrazak (left) and plain cloth POolice Office leads a suspected Drug addict (handicuffed in black vests) ito the nearest Police station after Police raided a Drug den in one of the abandoned houses at the old Town of Mombasa on Saturday,05th September 2015. The operation that also included Community Policing youths netted hundreds of suspects and several drugs. {PHOTO: MAARUFU MOHAMED/STANDARD}

A police radio crackles. “I get you .. roger...” the officer standing on the shores of the Indian Ocean, in the Fayaz area of Old Town speaks into his walkie-talkie.

“Proceed!” His colleague on the other end directs.

“The two suspects are moving deep into the ocean,” the officer reports as he watches a well-known drug peddler and his accomplice move deeper into the sea.

It is Saturday September 5, and four anti-narcotic police officers, two community policing officers and Old Town Chief Ahmed Abdulrazak watch helplessly for one and a half hours as the two peddlers venture out into the sea.

The duo eventually settle on a raised coral island.

The officers had, for close to thirty minutes, been watching from a vantage point while planning how best to pounce on a band of about ten youths. The young people were using heroin, marijuana and rohypnol tablets, locally known as bugizi, adjacent to a makeshift hideout about 100 metres away.

When they eventually pounced, the group scattered in different directions with the peddler and one addict, who happened to be close to the ocean, venturing into the water. Officers stood helplessly by.

“We are poorly-equipped in dealing with these kind of cases,” one of the officers tells us.

“Responses from marine police are also painfully slow,” another officer says.

But undeterred, the officials keep watch, shouting at fishermen on canoes or speedboats, who they suspect could be out to rescue the two.

Presently, a combined effort from the Central Police Division and their colleagues from Nyali Police step in to keep vigil. With armed officers on both sides, the two stay in the water.

After close to two hours, marine police officers arrive aboard a boat and arrest the suspects identified as Ali Naaman, who is found with 98 bugizi tablets and Abdalla Ahmed, who has 190 tablets.

Following President Uhuru Kenyatta’s directive, police have been busy raiding abandoned and dilapidated buildings in Crazy Boys and Mangwende in Old Town area. These two areas are known for muggings and other crimes.

Today, their raids have seen them net hundreds of syringes, half-smoked marijuana joints and cigarettes laced with “white crest” (a hallucinogen compound). All recovered from addicts known to inhabit these structures, some which have precariously low ceilings.

On this mission, police nab at least three persons connected to the local drugs ring, two of them addicts and one of them a well-known peddler who claims innocence.

Accompanying police, community policing officials and Chief Ahmed Abdulrazak through the areas’ narrow streets, one is immediately struck by the hundreds of tiny blister packs, used to package rohypnol, that now litter the area.

The drug, we are told, is available in selected medical centers but only with official doctor prescription or bribe.

Rohypnol, a blue tablet stuck under the tongue like a sweet, is prescribed for people with mental problems to calm them down. It is however, very addictive and gives a sleepy ‘high’ if consumed by a normal-minded person.

The youth we find huddled in these dens cannot flee even if they wanted to and they are ordered to sit down for a search. Most, in hazy stupors, sit down and stick out their tongues for inspection.

A youth spotting dark brown specks on the right side of his tongue is among those being checked.

“Look at me in the eyes,” orders a community policing officer but the young man cannot hold a stare.

“Huyu ni wa unga (this is a heroin addict),” the official remarks but a search of his pockets yields no evidence of drugs.

The officers tell him to go away and the terrified youth breaks into a disjointed run after the officer engages him in a mock chase.

“Mimi niliwacha unga (I no longer inject myself with heroin),” says another young man we encounter near Piggot Place and who identifies himself as Abdulrahman.

However, his slurred speech and glazed look tell a different story.

“Youths come from all over to smoke and inject themselves with drugs,” another youth tells the officers and when pressed further he confesses that he and his friends buy the drugs from a man called “Bolo”.

“Where does he stay?” the officers inquire.

“He is on the streets. He sells the drugs from the streets,” the young man says.

Casual banter with a woman at Crazy Boys points to a menace that is being propelled by complicity of rogue police officers.

“We watch police collecting bribes leaving our brother’s future crumbling like stale biscuits. Do not even get me started on the muggings as these youth look for money to buy drugs,” says Maryam Husna in discernible desperation.

She discloses that her brother is hooked on heroin and is part of a group of mateja (local name for drugs-injecting addicts) who terrorise and steal from unsuspecting tourists in the area.

“He was a university student with a promising future until he got swallowed by the drug culture,” she says.

Many like Maryam, who have been left to watch as their loved ones become a shadow of their former selves, are happy that the President also called for the arrest of drug barons.

“We want these efforts to combat narcotics to focus on the dealers that supply our youths. These youths are sick people that need our help to get treatment,” the President said.

However, reports of possible deaths from withdrawal symptoms reported in Kwale, after the anti-narcotics swoop was extended following the President’s order, have stakeholders concerned.

“We fear addicts are being victimised through these raids. These are sick people who need medical help,” said Abbas Mwanyi, Reach Out Centre programme co-ordinator.

The anti-drugs campaigner said the intensity of withdrawal depends on the level of addiction, adding there could be more reported deaths if “the swoop is haphazardly carried out”.

While care is needed in the execution of these drug raids, the Ministry of Health (MoE) has raised the alarm over the growing numbers of addicts in the region.

According to MoE, close to 20,000 people in Kenya are currently injecting drugs, with 92 per cent of them addicted to heroin. Further, Coast region harbours almost half of all people who inject drugs.

Statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime states that there are close to 10 million risky injections administered in Kenya annually.

MoE also notes that the use of these illicit drugs, and particularly injecting drug use, is associated with adverse public health consequences that include risk of transmission of HIV and Aids, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis and other sexually transmitted infections.