Tag Archives: italy

This week the US accused two senior military men from Guinea Bissau of being major “drug kingpins.” Guinea Bissau is a major transit point for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe. The idea that senior government leaders are involved in the country’s drug trade is nothing new. With chronic poverty, rampant corruption and loose borders, Guinea Bissau has proved to be a willing partner in flooding Europe with cocaine. For years, the tiny West African country has been plagued with bad government. In fact, when I produced “Cocaine Mafia” for Vanguard last year, I originally planned to shoot it in Guinea Bissau. However, shortly before we planned to leave last March, the army chief of staff, Gen. Batista Thagme Na Waie, was assassinated in an explosion. A few hours later, President Vieira was brutally hacked to death with machetes. While neither murder was ever solved, it is widely believed that both men were rivals for control of the country’s cocaine trade. Trafficking dropped in the aftermath, possibly because drug lords no longer knew who could guarantee their security, and we decided to focus our story on where the cocaine went from there as a result. We instead traveled to southern Italy, where African smugglers gain easy access to the European continent. When we reached the tiny town of Castel Volturno, one of the largest cocaine trafficking hubs in Europe, we felt as if we had stumbled into a slum that could just as easily be located in Guinea Bissau. Castel Volturno is a notoriously lawless town, overwhelmed with poor immigrants and controlled by the local mafia. I've reported from a lot of hot spots in the world, but Castel Volturno oozes with a special eeriness. We were searching for a drug trade that was practically invisible, but all the time we could feel the watchful eye of the Camorra, the local mafia, whenever we moved. People were often afraid to talk to us about cocaine or who was running the place, but we pursued every angle we could while our unseen targets watched us. Check out “Cocaine Mafia” here: added by: Christof