World's Coolest Mayor Arrested With 199 Bricks Of Cocaine

BOUREIMA HAMA. Getty Images.

(BBC) - A local mayor and his driver have been arrested in a desert in northern Niger with more than 200kg (440lbs) of cocaine in their vehicle, police say.

The two suspects, who have not been named, were allegedly transporting the drug to Libya after it had been smuggled into the country from Mali.

Niger's drug policing agency said it was the largest quantity of cocaine seized in the West African country.

Niger's Central Office for the Repression of Illicit Drug Trafficking (OCRTIS) said on Wednesday that police had been aware of a large quantity of cocaine being transported through the country towards Libya, and had been following the trail.

"[The investigation] led to the seizure on 2 January of 199 bricks of cocaine - weighing a total of 214kg - in a vehicle belonging to the mayor's office in Fachi," OCRTIS spokeswoman Nana Aichatou Ousmane Bako said.

"It's the first time that our country has seized such a big quantity of cocaine," Ms Bako said, adding that the drugs were heading for Europe, where they had an estimated street value of about $19m (£14m).

The mayor and his driver were taken to Niger's capital, Niamey, for questioning.

It's impossible to do anything right now-a-days. You see what's happening in New York City right now, a newly elected mayor taking to a podium seemingly every hour to talk about how he's going to clean up the streets, adulation raining down upon him far and wide. And then you see a mayor on the other side of the world actually cleaning up the streets, taking a record-breaking amount of cocaine, driving it out of his town, and what does he get? Arrested! There's no winning. Guy can't even take $19 million worth of powder out of his community anymore without being villainized. 

Also, on a more serious note, it's upsetting to learn that I have no idea how deserts work. How does one get caught lacking in the desert? Any time I watch a tv show or movie that takes place in a crowded city they always have those scenes where someone is camped out in a car directly across the street, staring through extremely non-tinted windows, only to never be seen. That's never made sense to me, but at least there's some semblance of blending into the noisy, chaotic world of a city around them. The desert??? You've got full 360-degrees of vision. There's no cops hiding in parking lots with their lights off. No buildings cutting off your horizon. No street lights causing you to stop amidst a buildup of traffic. None of it. At least, that's what I thought prior to this story. Now I don't know what to think about deserts. Because of this newfound confusion, I am officially OUT on deserts. Can't trust 'em, wont trust 'em.