By Omar El Sayed – World Editor
Around £14 million of cocaine bound for a suburban semi in Birmingham was seized in Liberia before completing its planned 5,000-mile journey from Colombia.
Liberian officials intercepted the consignment on a Brussels Airways flight heading to Heathrow in June, discovering the class-A powder disguised as stock cubes. The shipment had travelled from neighbouring Sierra Leone and has been linked by police to Dutch cocaine kingpin Jos Leijdekkers, mirror.co.uk reported.
British national Usman Ali has been charged in West Africa alongside four others in connection with the plot and remains the subject of an international manhunt.
The indictment names Ali and the Birmingham address in the Bordesley Green area where the drugs were allegedly destined. A second seizure of £230 million in cocaine—the largest in Liberia’s history—was stopped in Monrovia in July. Former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor was charged with drug trafficking and money laundering over that shipment, with Croatian national Nikola Ivancic accused of masterminding the plot.
Diplomatic Lobbying in London
Liberian Senator Amara Konneh visited Britain to lobby MPs and peers for support against Leijdekkers’ organised crime network.
“The UK and Liberia need to come together now to deal with this common threat,” Mr Konneh told mirror.co.uk. “We see a network that is trying to infiltrate our institutions, that is trying to corrupt our systems to find safe havens in our county. It is the same network that is supplying the streets of London and Birmingham.”
Konneh warned that the UK and international allies must use their convening power at the UN Security Council to counter the growing security risk. He appealed to British law enforcement to track down Ali, suggesting he could be hiding in England.
“We were hoping that the British authorities will accelerate their search for him here in England and hopefully make him available to Liberia to face justice,” Konneh told mirror.co.uk. “If not they could work with our authorities to review the evidence against him and hopefully prosecute him here in England.”
A Transnational Empire
Leijdekkers, 35, also known as “Chubby Jos” or “Bolle Jos”, has built a powerful cocaine empire from his base in West Africa.
The 35-year-old uses the pseudonym Omar Sheriff and has lived an exile in Sierra Leone since at least 2022. Dutch and Belgian authorities have sentenced him to more than 100 years in his absence. Following the August arrest of Irish crime boss Daniel Kinahan in Dubai, Leijdekkers is considered the world’s most-wanted drug smuggler.
West Africa now accounts for at least 30% of the cocaine reaching Europe, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. A specialist unit at the National Crime Agency is investigating Leijdekkers’ links to the UK.
Dutch prosecutors announced a £1.6 million reward this month for information leading to his arrest. Meanwhile, the European Commission suspended £15 million in aid to Sierra Leone last month after authorities refused to extradite him.
Regional Stability at Stake
Konneh compared the current drug threat to the civil wars that killed an estimated 200,000 people in Liberia between 1989 and 2003. Former president Charles Taylor is currently serving a 50-year sentence in the UK for war crimes.
“The demand for cocaine here in Britain is fuelling a potentially destabilising force in my country that is still recovering from a civil war,” Konneh told mirror.co.uk. “We have managed to restore stability. We have had four successive democratic transitions. Our people are moving on and then all of a sudden we see this menace that is trying to destroy all of that.”
Figures published recently show deaths from cocaine in England and Wales have nearly quadrupled in a decade, overtaking heroin for the first time. The Home Office estimates the domestic market is worth £9.8 billion.
“The National Crime Agency and Border Force are working closely with partners across West Africa to disrupt drug trafficking routes and dismantle the criminal gangs behind them,” a Home Office spokesperson said.
