The United Arab Emirates has indicated that it allows the import of Lebanese apples. As a reminder, the import of Lebanese fruits and vegetables had been interrupted by the countries of the Arabian Peninsula after Saudi Arabia imposed an embargo on food products from the country of the cedars. Riyadh then motivated this decision following the discovery of large quantities of drugs in several shipments.
This decision could be followed by similar decisions of other countries.
As a reminder, Lebanese customs often intercept captagon shipments destined for the Saudi Kingdom. February was marked by the seizure of 5 million pills of this substance. Since then, the Lebanese customs services have stepped up the fight against this trafficking, while the Lebanese Army has carried out several operations in the Bekaa in order to dismantle production laboratories for these synthetic drugs.
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.
