Africa

Europe's most wanted cocaine trafficker married into Sierra Leone's presidency

Guardian traces record seizure and street abductions to state capture, EU keeps counting President Bio among its closest African allies

Images

Composite: Guardian Design Composite: Guardian Design theguardian.com
The largest cocaine seizure ever, taken from the Arconian by the Spanish civil guard in May. Photograph: Courtesy Guardia Civil The largest cocaine seizure ever, taken from the Arconian by the Spanish civil guard in May. Photograph: Courtesy Guardia Civil theguardian.com
Cocaine bales are lifted out of the Arconian’s hold and lined up on the dock Cocaine bales are lifted out of the Arconian’s hold and lined up on the dock theguardian.com
President Julius Maada Bio delivering his address on African leadership at the 2026 Oxford University Africa Society conference in May. Photograph: Courtesy of Julius Maada Bio President Julius Maada Bio delivering his address on African leadership at the 2026 Oxford University Africa Society conference in May. Photograph: Courtesy of Julius Maada Bio theguardian.com
CCTV footage of masked and armed men in Overasselt, a village near the Dutch-German border, in what transpired to be an attack on a warehouse by Leijdekkers’ gang. Photograph: Handout CCTV footage of masked and armed men in Overasselt, a village near the Dutch-German border, in what transpired to be an attack on a warehouse by Leijdekkers’ gang. Photograph: Handout theguardian.com

Alan Jalloh, 40, was taken from outside a downtown Freetown supermarket during the late-afternoon rush, bundled into a black Toyota Rav4 by masked men who forced their way through traffic on the Peninsula highway. One of the two friends seized with him was a well-known Freetown footballer. Within a week, nine people had been seized from the streets of Sierra Leone's capital, most in broad daylight; police sources were later told the captives were dismembered, at least one beheaded. "They were exterminated to hide the truth," said one officer investigating the case. No bodies have been found.

Five months later, the ageing cargo ship Arconian left Freetown. In May, some 100 miles off the Moroccan coast, Spain's civil guard boarded her, disarmed six gunmen hiding in the darkened hold, and counted 1,279 bales of cocaine weighing between 30 and 45 tonnes — the largest cocaine seizure ever made.

The man who ordered Jalloh's abduction and was responsible for the cargo, according to a Guardian investigation drawing on dozens of interviews with intelligence and police officers across two continents, is Jos Leijdekkers, a 35-year-old Dutchman assessed as Europe's pre-eminent cocaine baron. Intelligence services credit him with import volumes vast enough to repeatedly crash the European cocaine market; last year his supply halved the wholesale price. He is also President Julius Maada Bio's son-in-law.

Multiple intelligence sources describe the result as the world's first true narco state, with port authorities, courts and the security apparatus functioning as the logistics department for cocaine moving north. A western official calls it "state capture by a criminal network on a scale never seen." At least 14 people have been killed inside Sierra Leone on Leijdekkers' orders.

The captured state is not a pariah. Bio chairs Ecowas, the West African union of more than 400 million people, and ranks among the most influential African voices at the UN. The EU counts him among its most reliable allies in Africa and has been sending aid to Sierra Leone for more than 45 years. Seventeen days after the Arconian seizure, Bio delivered an address eulogising robust leadership at Oxford University's Africa Society conference. The audience rose to applaud him.