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Trial Starts Monday in "DEA African Adventures" Case

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Sun Apr 03, 2011 at 09:09:00 AM EST
Tags: DEA, Africa, Konstantin Yaroshenko, Oumar Issa (all tags)
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I've been writing for over a year about what I call the DEA's African Vacations. Shorter version: DEA agents go to Africa, set up an elaborate sting, whereby cocaine from South America is flown to Ghana or elsewhere in Africa, so that it can be transported to Europe, its final destination. Even though the cocaine isn't headed to the U.S., the feds in the U.S. indict the participants, have them arrested/kidnapped in Africa and fly them to the U.S. to stand trial on charges ranging from conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization and conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, to conspiracy to distribute or import drugs.

If the Government is successful in the prosecutions, we will bear not only the cost of the overseas investigation, the cost of prosecution (and in many cases, the cost of defending those charged), and the cost of pre-trial detention, but also the cost of incarceration of those convicted for the next 10 or 20 years. [More...]

The defendants in the first 2009 case, pending in the Southern District of New York, Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure and Idriss Abdelrahman, are awaiting a decision on their motion to dismiss the charges for lack of jurisdiction. (Case No. 09 cr 01244.) All three have also filed motions to suppress their statements made to DEA agents on the flight from Africa to the U.S. (chartered flights, no less, paid for by the DEA.)

The DEA wasn't done having fun in Africa after the Issa romp. It tweaked the next sting (in May, 2010), by having its informant inform this next group of participants that he intended to have his portion of the cocaine proceeds flown to the U.S. in diplomatic pouches. Result: an added layer of protection against a claim of lack of jurisdiction and manufactured jurisdiction. And it worked. The Court denied this group's motion to dismiss because some of the cocaine (even though not their portions) was going to come to the U.S.

The six defendants in this case include Russian pilot Konstantin