Lebanese Army announces seizure of 64 M captagon pills in major anti-drug operation

BEIRUT — The Lebanese Army announced Wednesday that it had seized about 64 million captagon pills in the eastern part of the country, saying it was one of the largest operations ever carried out against this drug in Lebanon.

Lebanon is under pressure from Gulf countries to stem the production and trafficking of narcotics, particularly captagon, an illegal synthetic amphetamine that was Syria's main export before the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

In a statement, the army announced it had "seized about 64 million captagon pills and 79 barrels of chemicals intended for the manufacture of narcotics during an operation" in Boudai, near Baalbeck, in the Bekaa region, on the border with Syria.

It specified that this was "one of the largest quantities of drugs discovered on Lebanese territory" and added that "investigations are ongoing to arrest the members of the network involved."

On Monday, Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar announced that Lebanese authorities had dismantled an international drug trafficking network and stopped a shipment of hashish and captagon tablets bound for Saudi Arabia.

He said that 6.5 million captagon pills intended for export to Saudi Arabia via the port of Beirut had been seized, and that the head of the network and other members had been arrested. On Tuesday, the army announced in a statement that it had seized a significant quantity of captagon during a raid in Zahleh, in the Bekaa.

Captagon, an illegal synthetic amphetamine, became Syria's main export during the civil war that broke out in 2011, and was a major source of illicit funding for Assad's regime, which turned the country into a narco-state.

The new authorities accused Hezbollah, an ally of Assad, of also trafficking drugs across the extremely porous border between the two countries. The drug has flooded the region, prompting neighboring countries to demand that Lebanon and Syria step up their efforts to combat this trafficking.