The Interior Ministry said more than 14 million captagon pills were intercepted in Djedah in Saudi Arabia following reports from the Lebanese Internal Security Forces. This drug would have originated in Syria and would have passed through Lebanon via the port of Beirut with false Greek certificates.
It was thus hidden in boxes.
Outgoing Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi hails “the serious follow-up and the great professionalism and distinguished cooperation between the Lebanese and Saudi security forces” as Saudi Arabia continues to impose an embargo on fruits and vegetables from the Land of Cedars following the discovery of large quantities of the same drug.
The production of captagon, a kind of amphetamine, spread to Lebanon, Iraq and especially Syria, thanks to the Syrian civil war. It thus allowed the belligerents and in particular Daesh, had indicated the American authorities who had succeeded in seizing in 2016 nearly 300,000 pills worth 1.4 million dollars, on the one hand to keep their men in a daze during the fighting but also to have access to sources of financing via its export to the Gulf States and the Arabian Peninsula.
Thus, a Saudi emir, then 29 years old, Prince Abdel Mohsen was arrested on October 26, 2015 at Beirut international airport. he was then trying to leave Lebanon via a private plane with 1900 kilograms of Captagon , a drug produced in very large quantities in Syria, for an estimated value of 250 million dollars at the time. This individual was sentenced by the Mount Lebanon Court of Appeal on March 27, 2019, then released with a travel ban on April 26, 2020, at the end of his sentence. On July 21, 2020, the same day therefore, the Beirut Attorney General of Appeal lifted the aforementioned emir’s travel ban. The Saudi national has since left Lebanon on July 24, 2020.
