Just Earth News | @justearthnews | 01 Sep 2022, 09:45 am Print
Image Credit: Unsplash
Riyadh/UNI: Saudi officers foiled an attempt to smuggle 47 million amphetamine pills into the country, the media reported, describing it as the largest drug trafficking operation in the kingdom.
Two Pakistanis and six Syrians were arrested in a raid on Wednesday.
The arrests took place after the pills, concealed in a flour shipment, arrived at a dry port in Riyadh and were taken to a warehouse, Geo TV quoted the Saudi Press Agency as saying.
A spokesman for the Saudi General Directorate of Narcotics Control said it was the "biggest operation of its kind to smuggle this amount of narcotics into Saudi Arabia in one operation", the agency said.
The report did not specify whether the pills were captagon -- the amphetamine wreaking havoc across the Middle East -- nor did it say where the pills came from.
Captagon pills are produced mainly in Syria and smuggled to large consumer markets in the Gulf.
Trade in captagon in the Middle East grew exponentially in 2021 to top $5 billion, posing an increasing health and security risk to the region, a report by the New Lines Institute said in April, the report said.
Saudi Arabia is the biggest captagon market, and the kingdom´s customs body seized 119 million of the pills last year.
- US: Kansas man kills his wife, buys sex doll worth USD 2000 with her life insurance payout
- Elon Musk meets premier Li Qiang during visit to China
- Sudan: Security Council members call for immediate halt to military escalation in El Fasher
- Stunning Thai transgender beauty queens steal spotlight by appearing for Thai military draft
- High school athletic director arrested for allegedly using AI to create deepfake racist audio of principal