Dubai police say they have arrested six people from an international crime syndicate involved in “one of the largest captagon smuggling operations in the world ”.
Pills hidden inside belongings. Photo: CNN
The pills were hidden using "innovative smuggling methods" in 432 pieces of high-end furniture and 651 doors expertly crafted from iron and wood, it said, adding that removing the pills took "days".
“The UAE is an impregnable fortress against any threat that threatens the security and prosperity of its society,” UAE Interior Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a statement on X on Thursday.
A surveillance video shared by the country's interior ministry on Thursday shows the suspects attempting to smuggle the captagon pills through Dubai's Jebel Ali Port.
UAE authorities have seized hundreds of thousands of Captagon pills since 2019. In June this year. Abu Dhabi Customs said they had seized nearly 175,000 of these pills from the beginning of 2019 to May this year.
Experts say the majority of global captagon production takes place in Syria, with the Gulf region being the main destination.
The growth of the industry has raised alarm in the international community. Last year, the US introduced the Captagon Act of 2022, which links the trade to the Syrian regime and calls it a “transnational security threat”.
Mai Anh (according to CNN)
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