Columbian and Latin- American networks smuggle cocaine in Algeria

According to the head of the National Drug Enforcement Agency, Abdelmalek Sayeh the Columbian and Latin -American networks are threatening the Algerian borders.The menace is such that Algeria grew one of the drug consuming countries including the most lethal ones, cocaine on top of them. Algeria was for a short period of time considered as a staging post for the drug traffickers from Su Saharan countries to Europe.

Talking in a radio program, M Sayeh said that the phenomenon was frightening and was in a constant rise, notwithstanding the efforts deployed by security services and judicial ones to curb it. Much is left to do raise peoples’ consciousness to fight against this plight, according to him.

Figures released by M Sayeh to support his argumentation, show that the number of drug addicts in Algeria was drastically rising. Making a parallel between the year 2006 and 2007, He mentioned that this number jumped from 4336 to 5585 case in addition to an increase in the exportation of this illegal substance estimated at some 16 thousand tons, which doubles last year’s production.

But this figures are far from making of Algeria a drug producing country, it is rather a consuming one, according to M Sayeh since ,he added, the overall discoveries of this illegal product across the country didn’t exceed 120 thousand arboretums which were completely destroyed.

Referring to Interpol’s bust of a boat carrying cocaine due to get into the Algerian port, M Sayeh said that this didn’t mean a failure within the Algerian customs services , pointing out that the Algerian borders were very large which makes it very difficult to secure them all.

Some Columbian and Latin -American networks are drawing benefit from the this huge territory to supply their networks in the Sub- Saharan countries through neighboring countries like Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.