Ugandan woman charged over Sh84m cocaine

By Nancy Akinyi

A Ugandan woman has been charged in a Kibera court with trafficking in cocaine valued at more than Sh84 million.

Ms Anne Birungi Bisaso denied the charge before Senior Principal Magistrate Grace Nzioka and was remanded up to tomorrow when the court decides her fate on bond.

She was charged that on June 5, at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, she was found trafficking by conveyance 21.24kg of cocaine.

The charge sheet states that the estimated market value of the drugs in question is Sh84,964,000.

Ms Anne Birugi Bisaso when she denied trafficking in 21.24kg of cocaine worth more than Sh84 million at Kibera Law Courts in Nairobi, Monday. [PHOTO: EVANS HABIL/STANDARD]

The prosecution led by Chief Inspector Francis Ndiema indicated to court of its intention to present an affidavit to oppose the suspect’s release on bond.

Mr Ndiema told court he would be calling a senior officer from the Anti-Narcotics Department to present the affidavit stating the grounds why Ms Bisaso should be denied bond.

Her advocates had earlier sent a representative to court to request if the bail application could be handled any time in the day.

But the magistrate said that owing to the history she has had with such applications, she could not slot them any time in the day.

"From history, applications of that kind take a longer time and I can neither slot it in for today nor tomorrow owing to the workload that I have," she said.

UNDP official

Police records states that Bisaso posed as a United Nations Development Programme and Uganda’s Foreign Affairs ministry official when she was arrested.

Court records show that the cocaine was packed in black boxes with UNDP logo and labelled diplomatic bag.

Police at JKIA believed the labels on the boxes had helped her evade detection at other international airports.

The alert on consignment’s arrival at JKIA was through a tip off to the police by a rival drug cartel in Nairobi.

It is alleged that when police stopped her at the airport, she flushed out a UNDP identification card, which as it later emerged, was fake.

It is further alleged that on interrogation, the suspect could neither tell police where UNDP was headquartered nor the name of Uganda’s Foreign Affairs minister.

According to police, Bisaso’s passport showed she started her journey from Peru, connected to Brazil, then to South Africa, before landing at JKIA and allegedly intended to travel to Uganda by road.