Finding Mr Fox: 3. Highway 10
26:16 Share

Before we begin, just to remind you, many of the people we've interviewed for this season of World of Secrets speak Portuguese, so their words are spoken by actors and members of our BBC team. The islands are absolutely beautiful. This one is just a series of what I think used to be volcanoes.

sticking out of the ocean. Bumping along on the ocean waves, I get to see Cape Verde just as Brazilian sailors Daniel and Rodrigo would have done when they first arrived here seven years ago. And of course, more or less year-round sunshine, which is fantastic if you're a holiday maker. Perfect for sunbathing or messing around on the beach.

But Daniel never got to do that. Yes, it's a tropical paradise, but its location brings problems as well as blessings. It's June 2024, and on board a grey military-style boat, police patrol the waters just off the coast of Cape Verde. As a collection of 10 islands, there's a lot of coastline and a lot of water to patrol. And one of the things the police are looking for is drugs.

Wearing a black helmet and wraparound sunglasses, gun in holster and handcuffs clipped to the back of his shorts, the officer in charge signals for his team to board the fishing boat they've just pulled up alongside.

The fisherman looks surprised, confused. The officer in the wraparound sunglasses takes the boat's captain to the cabin and starts to question him. There's a problem. The names on the official crew list don't match with the people on board right now. But eventually, the captain manages to convince the police it's just a simple mistake.

The police explain that in peak season, up to 20 sailing boats can arrive here every day. They know that some of them will be carrying drugs. That's because Cape Verde lies close to what's called the 10th parallel. It's a line of latitude, 10 degrees north of the equator, that also marks the shortest way across the Atlantic from South America to Africa.

It's slap bang in the middle of the sailing route to Europe. Among certain law enforcement agencies, the nickname for this route is Highway 10.

If you're a trafficker and you've just shipped your product from Latin America, from Brazil or wherever, this is a spot where you can rest up for a bit. You can get any repairs done to your yacht if you've had any damage during the crossing and then you can either

Very little time.

One of the officers describes how, not long ago, they found about 200 kilos of cocaine on board a sailing boat. It was an old vessel, but freshly painted, which raised their suspicions. And the boats carrying drugs, they always come from Brazil. I'm told about a new trend they're seeing. Packages of 25 kilos of cocaine washing up on some of Cape Verde's beaches.

Maybe some have been thrown overboard after seeing a police boat like this one approach. But often it's deliberate. Traffickers study the tides and the currents and strap GPS trackers to the packages of drugs so they can find them later. That approach will at least avoid your crew being arrested, unlike those on the rich harvest. You were on the boat?

Wow! It turns out that one of the officers I'm with was actually part of the search team on the Rich Harvest. It was a massive task, he says, with international cooperation. He says it was the biggest haul of drugs he's ever seen in his life. So this is what Daniel and Rodrigo stumbled into, arriving with a record haul of drugs in a country battling against the tide of cocaine coming its way.

How on earth are they going to get out of here? This is World of Secrets. Season 5, Finding Mr Fox. A BBC World Service investigation with me, Yemi Siadigoke. And me, Colin Freeman. Episode 3, Highway 10. Spending time with the police in Cape Verde, it becomes clear they're at the forefront of a global battle against the traffickers.

In the main port, I see the remains of some of the boats they've impounded, which, like the rich harvest, were loaded full of drugs and on their way to Europe. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which has a base on the islands, at least 50 tonnes of cocaine cross West Africa every year, with most arriving via Highway 10, and about a third of that is sold in transit. So it's not just drugs passing through that's a problem.

For the people of Cape Verde, the bigger issue is the drugs that stay here. The island's prisons are packed these days with people convicted of cocaine-related offences, whether it's smuggling it, dealing it or using it. It's August 2017 and Daniel and the French captain are being held in one of Cape Verde's biggest prisons. It's here they'll have to wait for their day in court. It was terrible. The first 30 days we were in solitary confinement.

They put me in a cell here, the captain in another one, close to me. I couldn't see him, but we could talk. And I remember I calculated the size of my cell. I could put my back against one wall and my legs against the other. And I could use my feet to climb up. It was super small. No sunlight. And that was it. At 6am, they opened up the bathroom for us to take a shower and used to stare at us. We were just wearing swimming trunks.

We do our business, take a shower and in 15-20 minutes it's back to your cell. It's like that for 30 days to calm you down, to get used to the prison and that's how it goes. I find it hard to imagine what it would have been like to be plucked from sailing a yacht across the open ocean and dropped into a concrete box like this prison. So I visit the jail for myself.

outside a big steel gate and a big 20-foot high wall with rolls of barbed wire on the top. I think it would be nice to go in there.

I can put my outstretched palms out and I can comfortably touch the walls with either hand. So that's no more than about maybe three or four feet wide. I think it was long enough to lie down on, but not much more, so probably no more than about six feet long or something like that. God, that would be pretty tough. Not having a clue what was about to happen to him, probably thinking, like, I could be in here for the rest of my life.

Having days before been

in the open ocean, doing a job that he liked because he liked open spaces and the freedom to roam the world. And now he's stuck in this cell where his entire life begins and ends in a square of six feet or so, not much bigger than a couple of coffins, really. It's been pretty grim.

After those 30 days they put you in a bigger cell with about 10, 15 people and then I started hanging around a little with people I didn't know and at first they said they would kill us and at the beginning you don't know who they are and it may be that these people may have been involved with a gang but it was all just jail talk.

You can see into the corridors and it's like the big classic holding pens that you see in the movies. Iron bars, you've got guards patrolling up and down the corridors. And then boom, kind of full of guys just standing around, quite a lot of noise.

Meanwhile, as Daniel and the French captain are being held behind bars, their crewmates Rodrigo and Steve, who weren't on the boat when it was raided, are allowed to go back to their lodgings.

This does not go down well with Daniel. I was a little upset with them, in fact, because I went to prison without any money, without anything. And they didn't. They didn't even send me a liter of water, clothes, anything. I had no way of talking to him. No point did I feel like going to prison. I didn't even want to go near that place.

neither to visit nor to be arrested. So I didn't want to be seen there. Like, why are you going to visit him? But it isn't just that Rodrigo doesn't like the idea of prison. His bail terms forbid any contact with Daniel or the captain. And he isn't exactly free. He has to report to the police once a week and is forbidden from leaving Cape Verde. I was stuck in the country, a country I don't know, with people I don't know. I was afraid.

I was scared that someone would do something to me. I didn't know if anyone was from some criminal faction or not. I didn't know what was happening. But for them, it must have been much worse because they were the ones in prison, you know. They went to solitary confinement without seeing sunlight all day. Without a doubt, they suffered much more than us.

Steve and I stayed in a hotel for a few days, then we rented a house. A few days later, my mother came to visit me. We lived together during that time. Rodrigo even manages to get a job working in the marina. Unpaid, but something to keep him busy. But this is a big case for Cape Verde, widely covered by local media. And it seems not everyone is happy about him living so freely.

After about four months, a judge decides he and Steve are a flight risk. One day, when Rodrigo turns up for work, police are waiting, and he too is taken to jail. I'd lost my freedom. The conditions were terrible. The food was not good, and there wasn't much of it. There were lots of cockroaches in the cells. One night, I woke up with one walking across my face.

Unlike Daniel, Rodrigo is spared solitary confinement. He says it's nearly Christmas, and so the prison governor lets him move to the maximum security sector, where he can spend time with the rest of the crew. But it isn't all plain sailing. He has to spend Christmas Day cleaning the communal toilets. At least he has his mum, Aniette, close by, though. She's moved to Cape Verde to support him, and is able to visit him in jail. It was the best moment of my days, when I could be with her and hug her.

and she brought news of what was happening outside because it was the only way to know what was going on. Do you remember the first time your mom visited you in prison? I remember that my only concern was not to show any weakness. She was suffering a lot. The only thing I wanted to show her was that despite everything, I was fine. I wanted to show her that I was okay so that she would be okay. We hugged, we cried, we are together, we are alive, we are here.

So it was a very comforting dream to be with her. I think that as a mother, it was a moment when I had to be very strong, very strong. You enter the jail, hug your son, and he's in an area for dangerous prisoners and people who have committed heinous crimes. And your son is there in the same place as them, sleeping alongside them. And that's where I found Rodrigo, his head shaved.

During the entire one and a half hours of the visit, we didn't let go of each other. We spent the entire time hugging each other. Was he strong? He appeared so. But he was like that, so he could put me at ease. But I knew he wasn't well. I felt it in him and I felt it in his skin. The beating of his heart. He was cornered. And then we said to each other, this is a phase and we will get out of this.

But it's hard. You're angry. You feel injustice in your veins. It's just that you have to live with it. You want to get out of there together. Eventually, the three Brazilians end up in the same small cell. Two concrete beds with mattresses on top. One mattress on the floor. They rotate between them. Days become weeks and weeks become months. They exercise, they read, they meditate and they wait for their day in court.

Daniel and Rodrigo are certain. As soon as anyone looks at the evidence, it'll all be sorted out. They'd never even heard of the rich harvest until they answered that job advert. They'd had nothing to do with the renovations to the yacht where they assumed the secret compartments had been fitted. And they'd only joined the boat just before it set sail. As we say in Brazil, justice takes time, but it never fails. It may take a while, but we'll get there.

I always believed that at some point news would come that we were going to get out of there. So my head just kept thinking about it the whole time. But that news never comes. And then, finally, about six months after the arrests, they're put on trial. But will Justice in Cape Verde match up to Rodrigo's expectations?

When the trial starts, the sailors are handcuffed and led out the prison, flanked by armed police wearing bulletproof vests and helmets. Then, through streets that have been closed to other traffic, they're driven in a police convoy to the courthouse. It's the kind of treatment you might expect more for terrorists or gang kingpins. Rodrigo's bemused.

And we go up the stairs to the courtroom. Policemen at every entrance. And I'm thinking, what do they think could happen? That someone will burst in and rescue us? It was like they believed that we were one of the biggest, most wanted in the world. Then we arrived in the courtroom. It was full of people. Many law students, many journalists. Our family, our friends who traveled from Brazil.

The court sits for four days, the handcuffed sailors being shuttled back and forth from the prison each day. There's no jury. A judge will decide their fate. He hears about the police raid, the haul of drugs, about Daniel and Rodrigo and the two other crew members who sailed the boat to Cape Verde. One by one, the sailors take the stand and testify in person.

According to Rodrigo, there are a lot of questions. Why accept a job delivering a boat when you'd only be paid expenses? And what's all this talk about running up nautical miles? Is that some kind of drug trafficking slang? But the sailors insist, it's all just a misunderstanding. We're innocent. Then, at the end of four gruelling days... The judge said there were two versions of the story. Two very strong accounts.

The judge needs more time to consider the evidence. He announces that they will reconvene for the verdict in a fortnight or so. The longest 15 days of my life. I wrote the numbers on the wall next to my bed in my cell. Every day I'd wake up and I'd cross off one of the numbers. One more day gone, one day closer to the verdict. My expectation was on that day I'd be leaving prison, going home,

When we woke that day, the other crew members packed their bags. I was the only one who didn't. I said: "Don't fool yourself. Look at what they did in court." Four days of blaming us, right? I didn't have any hope. That morning, we put our best clothes on. They handcuffed us. As I walked out of the prison towards the vehicle that would take us to court, I noticed there were more police cars than usual.

But we had a very good ride from the prison to the court. We were singing all the way. We were singing the Bob Marley song, "Freedom". It's time for their verdict. The courtroom is even busier than before, but it soon falls silent. The judge asks us to stand and he starts reading these 110 pages of the verdict. The hearing wasn't recorded, but we've seen the judgment. I couldn't understand it. Lots of legal terms.

It could be said that the defendants intended to obtain a large compensation with the transportation of the cocaine seized. I don't know what to say, but I remember when the judge was coming to an end and I looked at the lawyers' faces. They already had their heads down, putting their heads in their hands. Little by little, it started to become clear.

Their conduct reflects a lack of value in relation to the legal order. In short, the protection of public health and the values of living in solidarity in the community. And then at the end, he found us guilty and I understood everything. The judge finds all of them, Daniel, Rodrigo and the two other sailors, guilty of international drug trafficking. He sentences each of them

to 10 years in prison. I couldn't cry. I couldn't. I laugh when I'm nervous. I cursed myself and I laughed. Our lawyers said we have to stay calm. How can I stay calm? I was already in prison for months and now I have to stay for months more before going to appeal this? As they were putting the handcuffs back on, my mother came as close as possible and said:

This isn't going to stay like this. We are going to appeal. This isn't going to end like this. Daniel is at his lowest, stuck on an island thousands of miles from home and facing a long stretch in prison. He wells up while talking to us. Reliving this moment is clearly taking its toll. We suggest it's time to take a break. It's a devastating blow to the four men. They've been kept sane by the hope this would soon all be over.

But as they stand in the dock, convicted men, with their families in tears in the public gallery, it's suddenly all too real. There might be an appeal or new evidence could come to light, but it's a distant dream. Right now, they're facing a decade behind bars for a crime they say they didn't commit.

Back at the prison, the sailors are moved into the area for convicted criminals. It means more time out with their cells, but that's little comfort. They launch an appeal, but even Rodrigo, who's normally the optimist, no longer bothers with a calendar on his wall to count down the days. There seems no end in sight. And there's something else. Something eating away at them. It's what one of the defence lawyers describes as a ghost hanging over the case.

Why didn't they go after Fox? Why wasn't Fox called to testify? He's the main suspect in this whole story. At no time did the Cape Verde justice system go after him. But far away, across the ocean, there is someone else who's taking an interest in the case. It didn't make sense for the boat to come to Brazil for renovation work. His focus is not on the sailors.

It's on the British man who owns the yacht, paid for its renovation, employed Daniel and Rodrigo. The man who came to their rescue when the engine failed. The man who then appears to him to have vanished. What's he coming here for? This Brazilian detective is determined to find out more about Mr Fox. We had to arrest him and bring him to answering court. That's next time on World of Secrets.

This has been episode three of six of Finding Mr Fox, season five of World of Secrets from the BBC World Service. If you're enjoying our investigation, then please post about it on social media. We would love others to find out about our journalism. I'm Colin Freeman. And I'm Yamisi Adegoke. The producer is Charlotte MacDonald. The executive producer is Joe Kent.

Additional production is by I.M. Leroy, Christine Kiss, Nick Norman Butler and Chiara Francovilla. And field producing by Julia Rodriguez in Cape Verde. The series editor is Matt Wallace. Production coordinator Gemma Ashman. And the sound design and mix are by Tom Brignall. Rodrigo is voiced by Edison Okaija. Daniel by Antonio Fernandez. And Agnet voiced by Monica Vasconcelos.

At the World Service, Cat Collins is the senior producer and John Munnell the commissioning editor.