Watch: Saudi Arabia foils bid to smuggle 30m drug tablets
Haul was stowed into cardamom containers
Cairo: Saudi Arabia said Wednesday it had foiled an attempt to smuggle over 30 million drug tablets of amphetamine into the country.
The Interior Ministry tweeted it had foiled an “international criminal” plan to smuggle 30.3 million tablets of the drug inside cardamom containers at a dry port in Riyadh.
The would-be recipients of the shipment were arrested, the ministry added. They are two Saudi citizens and two Syrian residents, according to the ministry.
In recent months, Saudi authorities have reported uncovering a series of aborted drug smuggling attempts.
Last month, the Saudi Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) announced thwarting an attempt to smuggle 2.3 million Captagon drug pills at a border crossing into the kingdom,
In October, ZATCA customs officers foiled an attempt to smuggle over 12 million Captagon pills, which were hidden inside a coca shipment at the Jeddah port.
Drug smuggling and trafficking is an offence punishable by up to death in Saudi Arabia.