Lebanon seizes 10 million captagon pills being smuggled to Saudi Arabia

BEIRUT- Lebanon’s security forces have seized an estimated 10 million captagon pills that were to be smuggled to Senegal and then on to Saudi Arabia, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said in a tweet on Friday.

The drugs were found in a shipment of rubber carbon during an operation in which four people were arrested in the Al-Qubbah area, in northern Lebanon, Mawlawi said.

Malawi added: “Based on information available to the Division’s Command about the smuggling preparations by wanted individual of initials J.Sh., the Division was able to identify the members of the network and the warehouse of the goods in the Qubbah area in Tripoli.”

Captagon – a mix of amphetamines also known as the “poor man’s cocaine” – is one of the more popular recreational drugs among the youth in the Middle East.

Large quantities are produced in Syria and smuggled through neighboring Lebanon and Jordan to the Gulf, according to security officials in those countries.

In 2021, Saudi Arabia put in place an import ban on Lebanese products over drug smuggling by the Iranian backed Hezbollah militant group

Last month, the United States Treasury sanctioned two Lebanese nationals accused of involvement in the trafficking of captagon from Syria.

This development comes after :

Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a peace deal that was brokered by China

This also comes after Saudi Arabia decided   to invite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab League summit , Riyadh is scheduled to host on May 19, sources have told Reuters, a move that reflects a change in the regional approach towards peace in the region.

But Qatar’s prime minister said on Thursday that the original basis for the 2011 suspension of Syria’s membership in the Arab League still stands and he reiterated Doha’s stance against normalisation with Syria unless there is a political solution.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani’s comments came ahead of Friday’s meeting of regional foreign ministers that neighbouring Saudi Arabia called to discuss Syria’s return to the Arab League.

Ministers and top officials from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – along with those of Egypt, Iraq and Jordan are meeting today Friday at Saudi Arabia’s request.

Qatar, which has previously spoken out against efforts by some countries to reestablish relations with Damascus, has not changed its position, Sheikh Mohammed said.

Syria’s suspension from the Arab League was imposed after President Bashar al-Assad’s government launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011, hundreds of thousands mostly civilians were killed.

But Saudi Arabia, which has long resisted normalisation with al-Assad, said after a rapprochement with Iran, Syria’s key regional ally, a new approach was needed with Damascus.

“Today’s Captagon discovery could prove that Qatar is right” Ali Hussein , a political analyst was quoted as saying , adding ” nothing has changed in Syria”

Gorbachev’s role

The executive director of the vision of Arabism, journalist Nawfal Daou, said, in a tweet on his account via “Twitter”, that “the Arab solution proposed to Bashar al-Assad is for him to play in Syria the role of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, dissolving the regime, adjusting the composition of institutions, returning those who deserted them, and giving Syrians their political rights and putting Syria on the line of the new Arab regime,, ends the era of ideology and joins the technological age era “which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman is leading

(Reuters)/ News Agencies