'This drug is evil': Kush is ruining lives - with ingredients shipped from the UK
This one will likely be parked at the port permanently. The contents are suspected to be the ingredients of kush, the deadly synthetic drug ravaging Sierra Leone.
Sky News was given access to the container two weeks after it was seized.
"Preliminary testing has shown that these items are kush ingredients," says the secretary of the Ports Authority, Martin George, as he points to the marked contraband in massive multicoloured Amazon UK bags and a large blue vat of strongly smelling acetone.
He adds: "Shipped from the United Kingdom."
The container was selected for screening based on its origin. The UK is with the EU and South America on the list of places considered high risk for the import of illicit substances fuelling the drug trade in Sierra Leone and the region.
Kush has shaken this part of West Africa to its core - not just Sierra Leone but Liberia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia. It is highly addictive, ever-evolving and affordable.
The sprayed grey-green marshmallow leaves are rolled in a joint like marijuana and are extremely dangerous. Samples of the drug tested by researchers contained nitazens, one of the deadliest synthetic drugs in the world.
"It was a shock to find them in around half of the kush samples we tested, as at that point there was no public evidence they had reached Africa," says Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo from Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) who independently tested kush from Sierra Leone.
"Nitazenes are among the deadliest drugs available on retail drug markets across the world - with one nitazene in kush in Freetown being 25 times stronger than fentanyl," she added.
The shocking effects of its potency can be seen on the bodies of young men and women around Freetown. Teenagers with sores eating away at their legs, unable to walk. Mothers who smoked during pregnancy carrying sickly rash-covered infants. Young men drooling from the intense high and slumped over while still standing.
They are not the fringes of Sierra Leonean society but a growing demographic of kush users searching for an escape. People riddled by poverty and unemployment, living in the dark corners of a capital city which has endured a brutal civil war and Ebola epidemic in the last three decades alone.
An entire community of men and women of all ages is held together by kush addiction under a main road that cuts through the heart of Freetown.
They call themselves the "Under de Bridge family" and live in the shadows of the overpass, surrounded by the sewage and rubbish discarded by their neighbours.
One of them tells us the harsh conditions drive him to keep smoking kush even after losing more than 10 friends to the drug - killed by large infected sores and malnutrition.
Nearby, 17-year-old Ibrahim is pained by growing sores and says the drug is destroying his life.
"This drug is evil. This drug is bad. I don't know why they gave me this drug in this country. Our brothers are suffering. Some are dying, some have sores on their feet. This drug brings destruction," he says.
"Look at me - just because of this drug. I have sores on my feet."
Across a stream of sewage, a young mother expecting her second child cries from fear and anguish when I ask her about the risk of smoking while pregnant.
"Yes, I know the risk," Elizabeth says, nodding.
"I'll keep smoking while I live here but I have nowhere else to go. It helps me forget my worries and challenges."
Life under the bridge is disrupted from its sleepiness by a yell. A plain-clothed police officer is chasing a child accused of selling kush.
The lucrative industry is absorbing all age groups and spreading rapidly to nearby countries - even passing through three different borders to reach the smallest nation in mainland Africa, The Gambia.
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Gambian law enforcement has cracked down on spreading kush use with regular zero tolerance drug raids. The small population is extremely vulnerable and the country is yet to open its first rehabilitation centre. Rising xenophobia seems to be mostly directed at Sierra Leonean immigrants who they blame for smuggling kush into the country.
We spoke to one man from Sierra Leone who was arrested for dealing kush in The Gambia and spent a year in prison. He says that though he feels saddened other Sierra Leoneans are being alienated as a result of the trade he was involved in, he has no remorse for "following orders".
"Do I feel guilty for selling it? No, I don't feel guilty. I'm not using my money to buy the kush, people always give me money to get kush for them," he tells Sky News anonymously.
"I needed a job. I needed to take care of my son."
Gambia's hardline approach has been credited with driving its local kush industry underground rather than eradicating it but is still hailed as the most impactful strategy in the region. Sierra Leone's government told Sky News it needs help from surrounding countries and the UK to tackle the sprawling crisis.
Transnational crime experts like Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo see the rise of kush as part of a global synthetic drugs network that requires a multi-national response.
"Coordinated action is urgently needed across the supply chain, particularly focused on nitazenes - the deadliest kush component," says Ms Bird.
"Our research indicated that kush components are being imported to West Africa from countries in Asia and Europe, likely including the UK. All countries in the supply chain bear responsibility to act to mitigate the devastating and expanding impacts of kush across West Africa, a region with scarce resources to respond."
Sky News' Africa correspondent wins award
Yousra Elbagir has been named a winner of the International Women's Media Foundation 2025 Courage in Journalism Awards.
She has chronicled the current war in Sudan, which has displaced more than 13 million people, including her own family.
Recently, Elbagir led the only television news crew to document the fall of Goma - the regional capital of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo - to M23 rebels backed by Rwanda.
In the past year, her reports from the frontlines of Sudan's war have broadcast massive scenes of devastation inside a global humanitarian crisis.
She said: "Our job as journalists is to reveal the truth and inform the public. Sometimes, it's about exposing the misdeeds of the powerful. Other times, it's about capturing the scale and depth of human suffering. Our job is also getting more difficult: Information wars and contempt for legacy media is growing by the day, which makes our job even more important."
Elbagir added: "It is an honour to receive the IWMF Courage Award and join the ranks of such incredible women journalists. The courage to share the truth in our polarised world is at the heart of public service journalism and to be recognised for it is truly affirming - it gives me faith that people are listening."
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When the van passed through the prison's large iron gates, Inch and Perham were offloaded with the other detainees to be processed. Walking towards the prison compound, the rancid smell of sewage and festering, overflowing rubbish bins assailed their nostrils. Inmates openly defecated and urinated into the drains in front of their eyes. As many of the guards were illiterate, Perham and Inch were checked in at the central office by another prisoner, who spoke minimal English. After handing over their belongings, they were left with just the shirts on their backs. Which cell Perham and Inch were to be held in was determined by how much money they could offer the guards. By this point, neither had any cash on them. 'That was rather tricky,' Perham says simply, with a slight smile. Known by inmates as 'Le Couloir', the prison's layout is a long corridor with rooms on each side. Inmates unable to pay were placed in cells with violent, predatory offenders. The pair were told that as white Westerners who were likely to be wealthier than their fellow inmates, they would be staying in a 'comfortable living area with access to a toilet and a comfortable bed'. This, like so many other assurances made to them by the officers, was not the case. Their first cell, where they spent two weeks, was crammed with 30 other prisoners sleeping on mattresses, two abreast, that covered the entire floor. 'How [so] many people fitted in that room, I do not know,' Inch says. The pair's only pitiful defence against the rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes that infested the cell was a small handheld fan they managed to obtain. At the cell door was a huge mound of flip-flops, which all the prisoners took from at random. 'I even found one of the guards with my shoes on,' Perham remembers. Each cell was ruled over by a 'chief', who determined where others were allowed to sit and what privileges they could earn. The distinction between guards and prisoners was blurred. Officers socialised in the same areas and would bully inmates for money. Anything the pair needed – food, medicine, toiletries, a phone or small luxuries, even exercise – had to be paid for with bribes to the prisoners and guards inside. Fortunately, on their first night, they were given a warm reception by 'Kati', a chief in an Arsenal football shirt, who offered them his bed. Inch and Perham spent the first night sleeping head to toe on a mattress in the corner. Perham says: 'You pull together and you work together. You work as one body because the conditions are such that you have no personal space.' Only thoughts of his wife and young daughter, and the precious weekly phone calls he could make to them back in the UK, got him through the terrible days and nights. The water from the showers, which would often run out, was so contaminated that the men would have to douse themselves in disinfectant afterwards. Their rations were a few bowls of rice each day with a thin sauce poured on top. They were only able to survive by bribing their local lawyer to bring in pizzas and burgers with money transferred from their families. Outside the cell, their skin colour made them a target for financial extortion and intimidation. On the first morning of their captivity, as they queued to shower, Inch was kicked in the stomach and attacked by another inmate. 'You would witness violence in some ways most days,' Perham says. Shortly into their detention, they were led into the central, and most violent, part of the prison, reserved for those with no money. 'This was one of the most traumatic parts of the whole story for me, going to that place and finding a way to get out of there,' Perham tells me. He was threatened with what his wife now describes as 'serious, serious abuse', and extorted for money. Through intermediaries inside the prison, the pair were able to pay the £850 needed to secure their place back in the slightly safer cell. On the outside, Perham's wife, Marianne Heikkala, a 31-year-old finance director at a health company, and Inch's partner, Cheryl Potter, a 45-year-old paramedic, mounted a campaign to secure their release through petitions to Guinea authorities and letters to the Foreign Office and John Marshall, the British ambassador to Guinea at the time. A lawyer, supplied by Aerostar to argue their case, spent months trying to convince the local authorities of the pair's innocence. Two weeks later they were transferred to the second cell, where they would spend two and half months living cheek-by-jowl with 80 other inmates, sharing one bathroom. As newcomers, Inch and Perham were made to sit in the centre of the room, this one the size of a railway carriage, beneath a plume of tobacco smoke, unable to stretch their legs. At night, they wore facemasks to try to avoid contracting tuberculosis. The deplorable conditions took their toll, with Inch suffering from malnutrition, muscle wastage and gastrointestinal upsets. The noise inside was a cacophony of shouting from the inmates, many of whom downed energy drinks to keep themselves awake at night, and dozens of chickens and ducks that freely roamed the prison before being slaughtered and served to the inmates. 'You could not hear yourself think. I would have to wear earplugs if I wanted to read,' Perham says. Perham, an ultramarathon runner and long-distance cyclist, meditated each morning and would try to maintain a strict exercise routine of press-ups and sit-ups to get himself through the day. Occasionally they received small luxuries from loved ones, including a parcel packed with books, letters and mementoes. Perham's face lights up when asked about the books his wife was able to get through to him: Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, The Lord of the Rings, The Three Musketeers… 'He said, 'Classics, please.' That was the task,' Heikkala tells me. 'It needed to be a classic and from a Nobel laureate because [that would ensure] a good shelf life.' He didn't want anything that would touch too closely on his own situation. Perham chuckles when shown the picture of him in the cell holding Stephen Fry's Odyssey, a broad smile on his face. 'It really helped, it took me out of where I was and allowed me to see what I was experiencing in a different light, which was extremely powerful.' All the while, the pair would frequently be hauled before the court for updates on their case. They quickly learnt not to put too much hope in the Guinean justice system. On February 25, day 55 of their imprisonment, they were told that the prosecutor had agreed in writing to conditional release without bail. Ten days later, the judge also granted them conditional release. Three days after that, the British ambassador arrived at the prison with the pair's local lawyer to collect them. To their families, February 28 had been communicated as the date that Inch and Perham would finally be coming home. 'They showed us our papers, we went through the whole process of signing out of the prison, giving things away and saying goodbyes,' Perham says. But as they walked through the door, they were pulled to one side by the head of the prison, who had phoned the chief prosecutor and, without any explanation, informed them that they were not being released after all. 'That was crushing,' Perham recalls. 'We had no explanation. We had already mentally prepared ourselves to be outside, and the ambassador was even waiting there to collect us, so being marched back inside was a real low point.' It was then, he says, that the pair 'had to really find what we're made of and pull on the resilience we had'. Freedom at last It was not until April 10 that, after a lengthy appeal process, the court confirmed another conditional release. The next morning, after exactly 100 days of imprisonment, Richard Perham and Paul Inch were finally freed. A picture tells a thousand words. This could not be more true for Inch and Perham's family, whose next communication from the pair was a photo of them in the back seat of a taxi heading towards the British embassy in Guinea. Grinning from ear to ear, and each sporting an impressive beard and moustache, they give a thumbs up. 'It was the first air conditioning we had had for three months,' Perham says, describing the moment they walked into the British embassy. 'It was surreal, and I struggle to remember details. It's such a blur. It was a mix of elation and realisation. We were never truly out of the lion's mouth, but the moment we were in that car [we felt] relatively safe.' The ordeal, however, was not completely over. The men were placed under house arrest in a hotel near the prison for another 40 days, before finally being given their passports and allowed to fly home to Heathrow on May 23. Back on British soil, the pair parted, Inch to recover in hospital in Nottingham, then later at home. 'It was difficult adjusting,' says Perham of coming back to the UK. 'It is the end of a chapter of my life. Right now I am just focusing on healing and being at home with my family.' Aerostar has denied responsibility for Perham and Inch's imprisonment, stressing that it had no responsibility for their travel arrangements and that it was a subcontracted effort under the direction of Fronteering Travel Services Inc, a subsidiary of Expedition Forces. A spokesman also denied that the company had failed to secure the necessary approval for occupying Guinean airspace. Van de Velde, the head of Expedition Forces, says in an email: 'We were contracted by Aerostar and sent there on their behalf just to recover the balloon, and that's where our involvement ends.' He says that he subcontracted some of the work to Inch and Perham as independent contractors, adding, 'I was not able to get the visa in time and make it in time for the recovery. That is the only reason I was not sitting next to them in prison.' During our conversation in London a week after his release, Richard Perham's anger towards Aerostar and its alleged failings in safety briefings is palpable. 'There were three things that went wrong here: there was inadequate risk briefing, no emergency protocol, and there was no monitoring system. These are three things that a company needs to do if they are sending people to an environment. This cannot happen to people. There must be measures in place that protect people from doing work like this, because this shouldn't have happened.'
