Governor, mayor and two other officials suspected in a cocaine-smuggling scheme in Guinea

Authorities inare questioning a provincial governor, mayor and two other officials suspected in a cocaine-smuggling scheme in the West African country, officials said Saturday.The four suspects _ including a regional security director and a military commander _ were arrested Thursday after a cocaine-loaded Cessna plane landed in the
bauxite mining town of Boke, about 100 miles (170 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Conakry.The four officials from Boke province are suspected of involvement in drug trafficking at MP3, a military prison controlled by the country's presidential guard in Conakry, Security Minister Mohamed Damba said.
«We want to verify the degree of their culpability in the case of the landing at night of a Cessna airplane at the Boke airport which had drugs onboard,» Damba said.
Authorities believe the plane landed early Monday in Boke from neighboring Guinea-Bissau, where officials have been cracking down on South American drug traffickers believed to be bribing officials to use the country's airports for stopovers en route to Europe.With Guinea-Bissau under scrutiny, smugglers are believed to be testing new stopover points such as Guinea, a nation riddled with corruption and ruled by the same man since a 1984 military coup