Lebanon thwarts smuggling of 700,000 Captagon pills to Saudi Arabia

Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi (R) gives a press conference about a seizure of a cache of Captagon tablets in Beirut on 25 January 2022 [ANWAR AMRO/AFP/Getty Images]

Lebanese security agencies thwarted the smuggling of 700,000 Captagon pills to Saudi Arabia, Anadolu Agency reported Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi disclosing on Friday.

Captagon is a type of amphetamine-style stimulant fenethylline manufactured for illegal recreational use, mostly in Lebanon and Syria.

Mawlawi posted on Twitter: “A new achievement for the intelligence department was recorded as 700,000 Captagon pills were seized before being shipped to Saudi Arabia.”

He also said that the security agencies intercepted three other attempts to smuggle Captagon to Saudi Arabia in one week.

Smuggling drugs to Saudi Arabia was one of the reasons that led to strained relations between Lebanon and the main Gulf state.

Last month, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Ahmad Nasser Al-Sabah proposed an initiative to rebuild confidence between Lebanon and the Gulf States.

The proposal included a term related to tightening measures against drug smuggling from Lebanon to the Gulf states.

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