In October, Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo told French radio that drug trafficking and corruption were over in his country, which has struggled to shake off its reputation as a "narco state" of West Africa.
Those words rang hollow a few months later. Fierce gunfire interrupted a Cabinet meeting Embalo was presiding over, and within hours of the deadly Feb. 1 attack he described it as a failed coup attempt possibly linked to the drugs trade.
At a news conference Thursday, Embalo said three soldiers who were arrested by U.S. drug authorities in a 2013 sting operation and pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking had been detained in connection with the attack.