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KonkNaija Media | May 4, 2016

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Australian Navy seizes heroin worth $155 Million USD off East Africa coast

Australian Navy seizes heroin worth $155 Million USD off East Africa coast

A photo has been released by the Royal Australian Navy showing heroine seized by HMAS Darwin’s boarding party from a boarding conducted on a suspicious vessel off the coast of Somalia in April. The heroin drug haul has been valued at Sh14 billion ($155 million) and it was seized in a dhow near the East African coastline on Monday.

Back in April warship near Kenya raided a dhow with 1,023kg of heroin on board, which remains the record heroin cache seized by the CMF in the region.

The recent huge heroin drug haul was seized in a dhow near the East African coastline on Monday by an Australian Navy warship patrolling the Indian Ocean waters.

The Australian High Commission confirmed the seizure in a letter to Kenya’s Foreign Affairs ministry, dated November 17, and which the Nation has seen.

The 388-kilogramme drug cache was discovered by the Australian Navy hidden in two separate void spaces during the search of the dhow.
“The intercept of the drugs is due to the excellent intelligence and a well-executed search plan developed in collaboration with Australia’s International Partners in the Combined Maritime Force,” said the sources, who cannot be named because they are not authorised to speak to the media.
The raid was led by Cath Hayes, the commanding officer of the Australian Navy warship called HMAS Toowoomba.
She said: “Our Pakistani colleagues at Combined Task Force 150 and CMF worked with us in the development of the plan that resulted in recovering the heroin.”

HMAS Toowoomba was deployed as part of CMF to counter piracy, militancy, smuggling and other illegal activities in an area covering the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Arabian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman.

KEY EXPORT ROUTE
This is largely because East Africa waters have become a key export route for Afghan heroin destined for Europe.
These raids for smuggled drugs, the letter from the Australian High Commission says, are part of the bigger multi-national campaign to disrupt the drugs trade in the Indian Ocean as the profits accrued are said to provide funding for known terrorist organisations.
In April, another Australian warship near Kenya raided a dhow with 1,023kg of heroin on board, which remains the record heroin cache seized by the CMF in the region.

(Read: Navy seizes heroin worth Sh10b at sea)
This is the second significant drug haul for Toowoomba and for Combined Task Force 150 since the Pakistan Navy took command of the maritime security and counterterrorism mission on August 14, 2014.