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As abductions go, few have been more brazen. Alan Jalloh was with two friends outside Goodies supermarket, frantic as usual with late afternoon shoppers. Rush hour in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, was under way with familiar gusto.
A black Toyota Rav4 forced its way through the Peninsula highway traffic. Witnesses describe burly white men leaping out, yanking on balaclavas. Jalloh, 40, seemed to freeze. As did his two friends, one a famous Freetown footballer. All three were dragged into the waiting SUV. None of them have been seen since.
Two days later, on 25 October 2025, another three men disappeared. Within a week, nine people had been seized from the city’s streets, most in broad daylight. They were dismembered, police sources were told. At least one was beheaded. An officer investigating Jalloh’s abduction, says: “They were exterminated to hide the truth.”
No bodies have been found.
* * *
Five months after Jalloh disappeared, an ageing cargo ship, the Arconian , left Freetown. By May, it was navigating savage seas 100 miles off the coast of Morocco when Spanish civil guards boarded. Lucas Fernández*, clutching his assault rifle on the ship’s lower deck, stumbled across figures in the Arconian’s darkened cargo hold.
Fernández raised his gun, finger on the trigger. A man pointed an assault rifle back at him. Time stood still. Fernández says the man became agitated, yelling in English, incomprehensible above the storm outside. “It was crazy,” Fernández says.
Within minutes, he and his fellow officers had disarmed six gunmen found hiding in the bowels of the ship. Nearby, were 1,279 bales of cocaine wrapped in plastic; weighing between 30 and 45 tonnes, it is the largest amount of the drug ever seized.
* * *
Seventeen days later, the audience at Oxford University rose to applaud the guest speaker. Julius Maada Bio had nailed it once again. His address – eulogising robust leadership – was the latest in a whirlwind year for the president of Sierra Leone.
The chair of Ecowas – the Economic Union of West African States , a region home to more than 400 million people, Bio is among the most influential African voices in the UN. The EU sees Bio as one of its most reliable allies in Africa and has a long history of showering the impoverished country with aid stretching back more than 45 years .
But the most important figure in Sierra Leone is not this ambitious politician, but the man who ordered the abduction of Jalloh; the man responsible for the Arconian’s monumental cocaine stash. A man called Jos Leijdekkers . He also happens to be Bio’s son-in-law.
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At 35, Leijdekkers is Europe’s pre-eminent cocaine baron . Intelligence assessments credit the Dutchman with importing volumes vast enough to repeatedly crash Europe’s cocaine market. Last year, he halved the drug’s wholesale price. Multiple intelligence sources confirm he has also transformed Sierra Leone into the world’s first true narco state.
“It is state capture by a criminal network on a scale never seen,” says a western official.
At least 14 people have been killed inside Sierra Leone on Leijdekkers’ orders. High-ranking police are believed to have been murdered on his say-so. Officers have fled the country fearing they will be next.
“If you get in his way, he wipes you out,” says an intelligence source.
Like most, they spoke on condition of anonymity, aware of Leijdekkers’ capacity to reach those who cross him.
Sierra Leone’s fate is a tale of western duplicity. Despite detailed intelligence of the extraordinary volumes of cocaine being exported to Europe, the EU continued to woo Bio and his government. The UN did the same: overlooking its own evidence.
And intelligence sources warn that Leijdekkers’ network is rapidly expanding. “The entire west Africa region is at risk,” says a Dutch official.
Leijdekkers’ prodigious transcontinental network brings deadly violence.
Dozens of his gunmen descended on a sleepy Dutch village last month intent on retribution. A European police source said: “We’ve had cocaine disputes before, but nothing like this. We’ve entered a new era.”
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The first recorded sighting of Leijdekkers in west Africa came in October 2022. A six-vehicle convoy thundered down Aberdeen Road, towards Lumley beach, leaving Freetown traffic police baffled. No one had briefed they were expecting VIPs. “‘The convoy was bigger than our president’s,” says one officer.
Unaware of Europe’s most wanted cocaine trafficker, Freetown police were sufficiently concerned to begin surveillance on the mysterious convoy, which had stopped outside the Sky Bar , a nightlife institution in the city.
At 4am, the group were trailed to a waterfront house near Hamilton beach. There, the covert surveillance team were stunned: revellers included their own bosses.
At the time, western intelligence agencies had no idea of Leijdekkers’ whereabouts. One of Europe’s most wanted men had simply vanished. For years, authorities had tracked his rise in the Dutch underworld, watching how the local hitman from the well-heeled town of Prinsenbeek accrued key contacts for transatlantic cocaine shipments.
When Dutch intelligence traced Leijdekkers to Sierra Leone in 2024, he had created something remarkable: a sprawling cocaine empire from scratch.
“He’s very adept at adaptation, cultivating ties,” says an official. “A new country, but he won over its most influential people.”
That included marrying the president’s daughter, Agnes Bio, and starting a family. Sierra Leone’s top officials partied with the moneyed new guy. Immigration chiefs secured him a diplomatic passport. The person whose job it was to investigate cocaine traffickers became a drinking buddy.
Leijdekkers’ wealth corrupted. According to intelligence, he was generating a $150m (£113m) monthly profit – greater than the running cost of Sierra Leone’s entire state.
Hundreds of people were on his payroll, say sources, including senior military and police figures. But what Leijdekkers coveted most was Freetown’s seaport: the Queen Elizabeth II Quay, perfectly sited between cocaine-producing South America and Europe’s booming markets.
In August 2023, his wife’s uncle, Yankuba Bio, became head of the port. Yankuba Bio denies a close relationship with “any individual called or identified as Jos Leijdekkers”. Sources, though, say port officials on Leijdekkers’s payroll make $2,000 a month – more than 30 times the national average .
In January 2025, the Dutch sent an extradition request to Sierra Leone for the fugitive, who had been sentenced in absentia to more than 100 years in prison for crimes including attempted murder.
Sierra Leone denied knowing the man. For Leijdekkers, it was a defining moment: he had state protection. His confidence culminated in the arrival into Freetown’s port on 18 April of the Arconian, a green cargo vessel the length of a football pitch. Over the next four days, about 30 tonnes of cocaine were hauled onboard, according to western intelligence.
“From experience, the maximum you can hide is eight tonnes. Thirty tonnes says you’re operating in plain sight,” says a UN agent. Yankuba Bio says such claims are “false, completely untrue and without foundation” adding that the port “does not engage in or facilitate the export” of cocaine.
On 26 April, a cryptic tip-off electrified European investigators. An unidentified vessel had left west Africa carrying 18 tonnes of cocaine, the second-largest such cargo identified in Europe.
Within 70 hours, the Arconian had been identified. At 8pm on 1 May, with the vessel pitching in brutal, black seas, Fernández, of Spain’s civil guard central operational unit , was first onboard.
Having arrested the 23-strong Filipino crew, the officer spotted a gun lying on the deck. “We started to search more deeply,” says Fernández.
After his team stumbled across the six-strong paramilitary detail guarding the cocaine, it became chillingly evident the gunmen had orders to kill anyone who threatened Leijdekkers’ drugs. They had no idea Fernández was a police officer.
“They thought we were an organisation come to rob the drugs,” he says. “It was very tense. Anyone – them, us – might have fired.”
It took interminable seconds for Leijdekkers’ men to appreciate the truth. “They knew then it would be worse to open fire.”
The Arconian seizure shattered previous understanding of cocaine trafficking. Firstly, Leijdekkers appeared certain that his €812m (£687m) cargo would reach Europe. No attempt was made to conceal the drugs. “There was a 60-metre-long corridor full of it,” says Fernández.
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Such nonchalance corroborated intelligence assessments that Leijdekkers had repeatedly flooded Europe with shipments, utilising a vast narco fleet and driving the wholesale cocaine price to a record low.
In the weeks before the raid, the Arconian completely changed its identity. Analysis for the Guardian by the maritime AI company Windward tracked at least three “suspicious” vessels from Freetown in the months before the Arconian. All rebranded themselves before leaving Sierra Leone.
In January this year, a cargo boat changed its registration details just before arriving in Freetown. After a month, it left for an unspecified destination. On 15 March, the vessel loitered off the Canary Islands for four hours. Investigators say the Arconian intended to linger off the Spanish archipelago, offloading the cocaine to a flotilla of speedboats .
Last Christmas Eve, another suspicious ship altered its name, flag and identifying traits when anchored off Freetown. With no destination declared, it left on Christmas Day. Approaching the Canary Islands on 9 January, it slowed and remained there for 13 hours before heading to Libya, which was also the Arconian’s stated destination.
Exactly the same pattern was observed with a ship leaving Freetown on 15 December, too.
Another eight vessels with near-identical traits to the Arconian have departed Freetown for Libya via the Canary Islands since 2024.
These include the White Labeille, which left Freetown in November 2024, was tracked off the Canary Islands and later “went dark”, switching off locator devices. Four months earlier, the White Eagle departed Sierra Leone before going dark off Morocco and being mysteriously abandoned. On the same day, another vessel – the White Arrow – was discarded in Libya with its Filipino crew, weeks after leaving Freetown.
Other ships were found abandoned close to Freetown. One trawler, Sky 777, ran aground on Lumley Beach last year. No one has claimed it.
Months later, the Agios Basseterre drifted on to nearby Hamilton beach. Witnesses described white men hurriedly retrieving packages from the boat. It, too, was never claimed.
As investigators pored over the Arconian, Sierra Leonean authorities claimed its cargo originated from a mystery maritime transfer. However, analysis for the Guardian of its final voyage by Lloyd’s List Intelligence confirmed that the ship’s speed was consistent. There were no stops for a ship-to-ship transfer.
Something else did not seem right. Usually, the loss of even a modest cocaine cargo unleashes a wave of underworld violence. Intelligence agencies waited for the bloodshed.
Two days after the Arconian’s seizure, Leijdekkers chaired a Freetown summit to pinpoint what had gone wrong. Who gave the tip-off? Did he have a mole?
But no violence followed. “Mind-boggling amounts of cocaine had gone,” says a police source, “but Leijdekkers behaved like nothing had happened. Extraordinary.”
* * *
Perhaps Alan Jalloh underestimated Leijdekkers? Or maybe he was blinded by greed? Either way, intelligence indicates he was seen to have “betrayed” the Dutch fugitive over a cocaine deal. Police investigating the kidnapping made a swift breakthrough. Officers tracked down the black Toyota SUV. “We recognised it from our surveillance w