Somali Tea comes to New Hampshire

By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Khat is cultivated in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen.

It's called African Salad. Somali Tea. And New Hampshire police's first brush with it came Sunday when a Boston driver tried to pass the bundles of reddish stalks off as a vegetable. Two skeptical troopers arrested him only after a federal drug handbook revealed the strange-looking plants to be an amphetamine-like narcotic native to Africa and Asia, police allege.

"It almost looks like very thin rhubarb," State Police Lt. Scott J. Carr said yesterday of the 12 to 14 pounds of khat seized in a car at the Hampton tolls on Interstate 95 south early Sunday. "We have never seen it before."

The car's driver, Mohmed (Mohamed) Osman Ahmed, 40, is charged with possession of a narcotic with intent to distribute. Ahmed, who lives in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, was released after a friend posted $5,000 cash bail, said Carr, commander of Troop A barracks. Ahmed is set to be arraigned April 4 in Hampton District Court.

"He may have picked it up and was going back to Roxbury. He may have been going from Roxbury back to a place in New Hampshire. We don't know," Carr speculated. He would not even rule out the possibility Ahmed was lost since he first caught Trooper Bob Larcome's attention for allegedly backing his car up at the toll booths.

Soon, things were not adding up for Larcome and his back-up, Trooper Gary Ingham, Carr explained. Ahmed allegedly tried to convince them the bundles contained a plant or vegetable. Ingham finally identified the drug from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's handbook, Carr said.

State police laboratory technicians confirmed the plants to be khat -- the first tested in their laboratory.

"It tells me they are at least attempting to move this type of narcotic into unknown territory, maybe in the hopes that it will go unnoticed because of what it looks like and it's so unusual," Carr suggested.

Khat, pronounced "cot," is a tall, flowering evergreen shrub cultivated in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen, according to federal court records. It is widely accepted within these cultures and used in the United States by those who came here as immigrants and refugees, according to the DEA. Khat is chewed or dried and drunk as a tea.

"It's very common in Somalia, especially among men," said Nasir Abdi Arush, head of the Somali Development Center-New Hampshire in Manchester.

Arush suggested the khat seized Sunday likely was going between Maine and Massachusetts, two states with large Somali populations, especially in the Maine cities of Lewiston and Portland.

"As far as I know, it's not used in New Hampshire," Arush said. "I guess (the car) was probably heading to one of those two places."

Khat has been used in Somalia for generations, often in the afternoons after work, Arush said.

"It's normal. We don't consider it a drug," Arush explained. He said it's important for Somalis to realize khat is classified as an illegal narcotic here.

"Awareness is really important. Many people, they don't know. I think it's good for the newcomers to know if it's legal and what are the consequences," he added.

Khat generally sells for $300 to $600 a kilogram or $30 to $60 a bundle, according to the DEA.

Anthony Pettigrew, spokesman for the DEA New England field division in Boston, said he cannot recall seeing khat in any significant amounts in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. But he said there have been incidents of the drug being smuggled into Maine in the last 10 years, at least one of which resulted in a federal conviction.

Source: Union Leader, Mar 05, 2008