Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed narcotics and terrorism conspiracy charges on Friday against three West Africans they said were associates of Al Qaeda and a related terrorist group, marking the first time such charges had been brought against people said to be linked to Al Qaeda.
The men, who were taken into custody on Wednesday in Ghana and flown to the United States on Thursday night, were arrested after a four-month investigation in which paid informants working with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration posed as members of a Colombian terrorist group, according to court papers.
Federal authorities have long maintained that Al Qaeda has been involved in drug trafficking, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
The two informants approached the defendants and sought their assistance in transporting and providing security for cocaine shipments as large as a ton from West Africa, through North Africa and on to Spain, according to the papers. One informant posed as a Lebanese radical who represented the Colombian group, the FARC, and the other as a member of the group.
The three men in custody were identified as Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman. They were charged with conspiracy to commit narco terrorism and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorist groups — Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The court papers in the case, an 18-page criminal complaint unsealed in United States District Court in Manhattan, detail the international sting operation that ensnared the three men, all members of what prosecutors described as “a criminal organization operating in the West African countries of Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali.”
The group had close ties to Al Qaeda, which was to provide security for the last leg of the drug shipment’s journey through the North African Desert, according to the complaint.
The two informants met with the men several times from September to December to negotiate the terms and plan the shipments, sessions that were secretly recorded by the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to the complaints. The complaints said the informants also communicated with the defendants by telephone and e-mail as they made arrangements.
Mr. Touré initially cited a transportation price of $2,000 per kilogram of cocaine, as the men discussed shipments ranging from 500 to 1,000 kilograms, the complaint said. But he later upped the price to $10,000 a kilo, citing his own costs and expenses, including paying people along the route. While the informants initially balked, they eventually agreed, according to the complaint.
The three defendants identified themselves to the informants as associates of Al Qaeda and said they had provided similar services to the terrorist group in the past, officials said.
The men were set to be arraigned Friday afternoon before Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV in United States District Court in Lower Manhattan.
A defense lawyer for Mr. Abelrahman, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, said he was reviewing the charges.
“Mr. Abelrahman will benefit from the full panoply of rights guaranteed to him under the Constitution of the United States and the laws governing criminal procedure,” he said.
James M. Roth, a lawyer for Mr. Toure, declined to comment; Mr. Issa’s lawyer, Julia Gatto, could not be reached for comment.
The three men were charged under statutes passed in 2006 that give federal drug agents the authority to prosecute narcotics and terrorism crimes committed anywhere in the world if a link between a drug offense and a specified act of terrorism or a terrorist organization can be established.
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