Saudi Arabia busts haul of 18 million drug pills

Cairo: Saudi Arabia has said it foiled attempts to smuggle over 18 million drug pills into the kingdom in the past five months.

The Saudi Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) has disclosed that customs officers had also seized more than 5,000 kilos of different types of narcotics over the period from January until the end of May. The haul was busted in a total of 465 smuggling attempts thwarted at the kingdom’s customs outlets, the Saudi news agency SPA reported, citing ZATCA.

Captagon pills made up the majority of the seized drug pills while narcotics included hashish, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant known as shabu.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has foiled a series of attempts to smuggle drugs into the kingdom.

Last month, ZATCA said its officers had thwarted an attempt to smuggle into the country around 29,000 Captagon drug pills stashed into a cheese cargo at at the Al Hadaitha border crossing in northern Saudi Arabia.

Last July, Saudi authorities busted a bid to smuggle about 2.1 million Captagon pills hidden inside a shipment of tomato paste also at Al Hadaitha crossing.

Drug smuggling and trafficking is an offence punishable by up to death in Saudi Arabia