37-year-old Emmica Emma Rje (from left) was sentenced to five years in jail over cocaine smuggling. | Photo: Michael Daniel/Eye Radio

Juba High Court on Friday sentenced a Nigerian national to 5 years in prison after being found guilty for smuggling 10 kilograms of cocaine into South Sudan.

Emmica Emma Rje, 37, was arrested in June 2022 in South Sudan by the Narcotics Control Division of the Criminal Investigation Department at Juba airport after leaving Brazil and transiting through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The convict – caught in possession of the substance at Juba International Airport – was believed to be a member of a criminal cartel of drug traffickers.

Upon his indictment last year, General Prosecutor Lilian George Ladu said the suspect had hidden the cocaine drugs inside a secret pocket in his bag.

In a pre-trial, the suspect had made a judicial confession of having possessed the forbidden drug.

However, he alleged that he was sent to deliver some jeans and trousers to a Juba hotel.

He said his client from Brazil had promised a hefty payment of 3000 Us dollars after delivering the stuff.

A sample of the substance was sent for examination in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, to confirm that it was cocaine.

But the results of the examination remain unclear.

However, Judge Joshua Ladu convicted Emma to five years in jail on Friday and fined him half a million South Sudanese pounds.

According to the judge, the sentence has been reduced due to an incomplete investigation by the police.

“The court has ruled against the accused Emmica Emmy to go to prison for five years starting from the date he was arrested and put in jail on the sixth of June 2022,” Ladu pronounced the verdict.

“Second, he is fined five hundred thousand pounds and added two years starting after the sentence that will make it seven years, and third, the drugs will be taken immediately today. The court has ruled today second of June 2023 for the accused to be sent to Juba central prison.”