DANGEROUS: Police officers destroy marijuana. FILE PHOTO 

Trafficking and consumption of narcotic drugs is thriving in Uganda in part because powerful people in government and police allegedly shield perpetrators from prosecution, our investigations show.
It has emerged that whereas majority of suspected drug traffickers arrested at Entebbe International Airport between 2006 and 2010 were Ugandans, only about three out of every 10 were taken to court.
Detectives allowed 63 per cent of 32 Ugandans they detained to go scot-free, the highest number out of 12 nationalities listed in a confidential internal police record seen by this newspaper.
Of the suspected Ugandan drug dealers caught, only six were prosecuted, the cases of three others were referred for consideration by officers at Police CID headquarters while three have their prosecution pending in court.
Overall, 31 of the arrested drug traffickers were freed, according to the October 28, 2010 report titled, “A list of drug traffickers convicted, suspected and profiled in Entebbe International Airport since 2006-2010”.
In one instance, a suspected female Rwandan drug trafficker, allegedly caught with two grammes of the pricey cocaine, was never tried but instead hurriedly deported.
Detectives said analysts at the government Chemist’s Laboratory in Wandegeya, during analysis, exhausted the entire amount of classified drug found in her possession.
Police Spokesperson Judith Nabakooba said their officers in the Anti-Narcotic Drugs Department did nothing wrong and that the freeing of Ugandan suspects resulted from false intelligence that led to their arrests.
“People released without being taken to court are those who they (detectives) arrest on suspicion based on intelligence received. When they check, including monitoring those alleged to have swallowed the narcotic drugs, they don’t find anything,” she said.
Other intelligence sources say top police officers receive hefty proceeds from illegal sale of the classified drugs seized at Entebbe Airport, which is why they leverage the release of Ugandan suspects said to be “couriers” for the mighty moneymen.
This paper reported last week that an intelligence briefing prepared for President Yoweri Museveni, accuses detectives involved in the anti-drug trafficking fight of profiteering and exacerbating the situation.
Weak laws
“The weak laws; weak enforcement; failure to deport foreigners convicted of smuggling drugs into the country and collusion by money-minded enforcement officers makes the fight against drug trafficking difficult,” a senior security source familiar with the inside dealings said.
Parallel spy bodies reportedly sanctioned by State House began investigating reports of a probable drug-trafficking racket, involving influential government officials, after President Museveni, said opposition supporters who participated in this year’s walk-to-work demonstrations were “drug abusers”.
In attempting to find out the source of the drugs, investigators say in a preliminary report that the proliferation of the banned substances in bars in city suburbs of Wandegeya, Nakulabye and Kisenyi – a hotbed for the suspended Activists for Change-engineered demonstrations over surging fuel pump prices and hyperinflation – resulted from leak of the drugs from police.
It is now easier and cheaper to buy the expensive narcotic drugs on the local market, they said. Ms Nabakooba disagreed. All drugs they seize are examined, signed and sealed by the government chemist and stored “safely” by police, she said.
“There is nothing wrong if it is kept safe in police stores and not tampered with,” the Spokesperson said when asked why police hold onto the seized drugs instead of tendering them as exhibits in court.
Ms Josephine Alupo, the OC Aviation Police at Entebbe Airport, in an undated communication to her commandant Beata Chelimo, wrote that “the exhibits still remained in police stores” even when suspects were successfully prosecuted.
“The court convicted them either on their own plea or court found them guilty through evidence adduced before it,’ she wrote.
It emerged last week that because the drug trade is lucrative, suspected traffickers prefer to take a guilty plea so that they pay the Shs1 million fine imposed – an easier way to buy their freedom instead of the alternative penalty that would see them sentenced to prison for a year.
Allegations that some senior detectives mandated to stamp out trade in illicit drugs are instead profiteering from it and exacerbating the situation reinforces demands by experts that Uganda needs an independent entity to win the fights against trade in narcotics.
Last week’s revelation, which police denied, surfaced just as the Force prepared to destroy between 25-36 kilogrammes of what it says is a stock of the illicit drugs. Entebbe Court magistrate Agnes Nkonge, however, declined to grant orders for the exercise.
“I cannot go ahead and issue you with a court order when the substances are in torn package materials,” she said. “I am not sure whether the material is of narcotic substance.”
It is alleged the illicit drug monies are also partly invested in development of mushrooming real estates. The US government recently flagged Uganda as a conduit for traffickers transiting from Asia and West Africa to Europe and the Americas.