A water heater in which smugglers hid 600,000 Captagon pills. (Screenshot from a video by ISF)
BEIRUT – The Internal Security Forces (ISF) announced in a statement on Monday that it seized 600,000 Captagon pills, weighing roughly 110 kilograms, hidden inside a water heater before the network was able to smuggle it out of Lebanon, through the Masnaa border crossing in the Bekaa.
ISF did not specify exactly where it stopped the operation nor the exact date.
"Information was available from the Central Narcotics Control Office in the Judicial Police Unit about a network preparing an operation to smuggle drugs inside a water heater, outside Lebanese territory through the Masnaa crossing in the Bekaa," the ISF statement said.
"Members of this office identified a member of the network, lured and arrested him in an ambush and seized the heater," the ISF statement added. The arrested man, with the initials A. M., was born in 2000 and is of Iraqi origin.
In the course of the investigation, another man with the initials S.A., who is of Syrian origin, was also arrested as he was "involved in transferring money to the network," the statement added.
Lebanese authorities claim to be doubling down in their efforts to combat drug trafficking in Lebanon and abroad, a practice regularly denounced as insufficient by the Gulf States, which have often intercepted the transport of drugs, especially the highly addictive Captagon, en route from Lebanon to other countries.
On April 3, the ISF seized 27 kilograms of hashish (a condensed form of cannabis) hidden inside bags of coffee in a warehouse in Mar Mikhael, a neighborhood in Beirut close to the port.
A week prior to that, Lebanese police foiled a drug trafficking operation by seizing almost 150 kilograms of hashish hidden in bags of za'atar (a mixture of thyme and spices), sumac and kishik (a fermented yogurt powder, mixed with wheat, ground and dried).
