Africa-Press – Angola. A total of fourteen Angolans are under arrest in Ethiopia for alleged involvement in international drug trafficking, the Angolan ambassador, Francisco da Cruz, revealed this Monday in Addis Ababa.
According to Ambassador Francisco da Cruz, Angolan citizens were arrested at Addis Ababa International Airport for being involved in international drug trafficking.
They are Angolans, mostly from Brazil, who used Bole International Airport, carrying alleged drugs, with the aim of getting the product to the country’s capital, Luanda.
“It is a worrying situation and, at the moment, we have 14 Angolan citizens in this condition, seven men and an equal number of women”, he explained.
The diplomat indicated that this number tends to increase, noting that, recently, an Angolan citizen was sentenced in Ethiopia for drug trafficking with a sentence of 12 years, a situation that he said requires a certain amount of attention on the part of the Angolan authorities.
“As an embassy, our responsibility is to provide all the necessary consular support and, as far as possible, discuss with the Ethiopian authorities the best way to deal with this matter”, he emphasized.
Ambassador Francisco da Cruz spoke of the need for cooperation at the level of the two States in dealing with this issue, both from a preventive point of view and from those who are already dealing with justice, “perhaps thinking about a possible extradition of some of them to the serving their sentences in national territory”.
Angola does not have an agreement on the extradition of prisoners with the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, which has complicated the situation of Angolans detained in that country.
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations, Angola and Ethiopia have signed few cooperation agreements, with the exception of air services and trade.
The two governments initialed the Bilateral Air Services Agreement in May 1977, supplemented by a Memorandum of Understanding in September 1998 to allow the respective airlines (TAAG and Ethiopian Airlines) to develop daily passenger and cargo services between the two capitals.
This legal instrument also established the principle of reviewing and signing the Air Services Agreement.
Luanda and Addis Ababa maintain five weekly flight frequencies with Ethiopian Airlines planes.
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