ONCE AGAIN, DRUG WAR PICKS WRONG BATTLE

The world is a dangerous and frightening place.

Perverts snatch little girls from their beds or their yards and adolescents
from their boyfriends' cars. Islamist terrorists break into a school in
Pakistan trying to murder Christian schoolchildren. Saddam Hussein cooks up
a potpourri of deadly viruses and chemical potions to unleash on invaders or
his countrymen.

Surveying this landscape of deadly threats from countless sources, New York
law enforcement authorities have still had time to home in on the menace
supposedly presented by a boy from an Atlanta suburb, 12-year- old Prince
Nnaedozie Umegbolu. Prince is awaiting trial in a New York City juvenile
court for acting as a drug courier, swallowing 87 plastic packets filled
with heroin before boarding a flight from Nigeria to New York in April.

Yet again, an overzealous war on drugs has caused prosecutors not only to
misplace their priorities but also to lose their common sense. Treating
Prince as if he were a drug kingpin, authorities have kept him locked up in
a juvenile facility, where he sustained a broken hand after an older boy
beat him up. Said Prince's attorney, Atlanta child advocate Don Keenan, "I'm
looking at a 12-year-old Al Capone if I'm to believe the prosecution."

Though there is no doubt that the boy acted as a drug courier, he is no
criminal. Rather, he is the victim of ruthless narco-traffickers who would
use even a child in their schemes. They preyed on a youngster who was
desperately homesick after 2 1/2 years in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, with his
paternal grandparents.

His mother, Alissa Walden, said she knew he was "miserable" in Abuja, but
she didn't have money for airfare to bring him home to Norcross. So without
her knowledge, apparently, Prince agreed to swallow the drugs in exchange
for an airplane ticket and $1,900.

The boy was eventually arrested at LaGuardia International Airport on April
11. By that time, he had passed several packets of heroin and was bleeding,
scared and crying, according to authorities. He was taken to a hospital and
later detained.

At that point, juvenile authorities had several choices, including referring
the boy and his mother to intensive counseling and supervision. They might
have insisted that Prince live with a foster family or other relatives, if
they believed that his mother had not supervised him properly.

Instead, they decided to prosecute; Prince now faces the possibility of
detention in a harsh juvenile facility until he is 18 years old. Police
apparently believe the boy's misadventure may have been orchestrated by his
father, Nigerian national Chukwunwieke Umegbolu, who is serving a 10-year
federal sentence for drug trafficking in Virginia.

But Keenan says that's unlikely since the boy's parents have been divorced
since he was 2. "This is a boy who hasn't seen his mother in over two years,
and he's never had a true father figure in his life," he added.

Keenan believes further detention would merely ruin the promise of a bright
boy who "has an amazing memory, who loves classical music, who reads
voraciously, things like the autobiographies of civil rights leaders and
Mother Teresa. He has a great heart."

Still, New York City prosecutor John Queenan insists: "He's not a victim in
my eye. ... [He] is clearly mature beyond his 12 years."

Let's assume Queenan has judged correctly. So Prince has the emotional
maturity of, say, a 14-year-old?

That still makes him far short of a threat to national security, something
less than a major narco-trafficker, hardly a menace to society. He's a boy
who was desperate to get back to his mother. He ought to be treated like
one.