This article is more than 4 months old

This article is more than 4 months old

Mozambique has expelled one of Brazil’s most wanted criminals, an alleged drug lord who has been on the run for two decades.

Gilberto “Fuminho” Aparecido dos Santos was sent home on a Brazilian air force plane that left Maputo at 1.30am on Monday with dozens of police officers onboard, the authorities said.

Brazil’s justice ministry said on Sunday that Dos Santos was already in a federal prison in the country.

Dos Santos was arrested last Monday in an international sting operation that involved agents from Brazil, Mozambique and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Mozambican authorities decided on Friday to expel him for allegedly entering the country illegally but kept the decision secret until he had left.

He is an alleged leader of the First Capital Command (PCC), considered to be Brazil’s top criminal gang, which wields control over cocaine supply routes from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

Its leader, Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, is serving a sentence of more than 200 years in a maximum-security prison in the capital, Brasilia. Dos Santos is accused, among other things, of financing a plot to help Camacho escape, police said.

Mozambique’s interior ministry announced Dos Santos’s expulsion in a statement and said he was also barred from the country for 10 years.

Dos Santos, who had arrived in Mozambique in March, was arrested at a luxury hotel in Maputo, along with two Nigerian nationals, according to the Mozambican authorities.

Police recovered a fake Brazilian passport, 100 grammes (3.5 ounces) of cannabis, 15 mobile phones and a car, as well as the cash equivalent of about $800 (£600) in Mozambican and South African currency.

Brazil issued an international arrest warrant for Dos Santos two years ago.

Police in Mozambique said when they announced his arrest that they were investigating whether there were other gang members in the country.