{{Rwanda National Police conducted a two days operation codenamed Usalama1 which means “safety” the operation started on Thursday and ended on Friday.}}
Usalama literary meaning safety is an Interpol supported operation conducted in Eastern and Southern Africa targeting a range of cross border crimes such as human and drug trafficking, wild life crimes, copper cables, smuggling of precious minerals and trafficking of small arms and light weapons.
During the two day operation, Police arrested a girl who was transporting two children aged between 8 and 10 without person travel documents from kampala to Kigali but later was released, two vehicles was also seized due to possession of fake documents where numbers on yellow card was not similar with those on chasis number .
One named Joel Gasana 39 was also arrested while transporting 20 kilograms of smuggled tin from Gatsibo distrit.
The Director of Interpol in Rwanda National Police Chief Superintendent Jean Nepo Mbonyemuvunyi said that the operation was successfully conducted by use of snap checks, canine brigade and other gathered information leading to the arrest of the criminals.
The searched area on vehicles was registration plates, identification numbers, documents, goods and tools while canine brigade helped in searching of trafficked drugs such as cannabis, heroin and cocaine.
Mbonyumuvunyi said that every crime is transnational and cross border in nature and this calls police force in the region to work together in order to deter and detect suspected criminals involved in transnational and cross border crimes.
The countries that participated USalama 1 are Rwanda, Burundi, Eriteria,Ethiopia, Kenya, Seychelles, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda which are members of EAPCCO while SAPCCO countries that participated are Botwana, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Swaziland , Tanzania and Zambia.
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