Lebanese drug dealer Nouh Zaiter. (Photo circulating on social media networks)
The Lebanese Army arrested the infamous drug kingpin Nouh Zaiter Thursday morning on the outskirts of his hometown, Kneiseh, in the Baalbeck-Hermel governorate, L'Orient Today's correspondent in the Bekaa reported.
The raid took place at 5 a.m., and there were no clashes with the patrol during his arrest, our correspondent reported.
Zaiter has been under sanctions of the U.S. Department of the Treasury since 2023 for the production and trafficking of the amphetamine Captagon.
He has confessed in interviews to committing hundreds of crimes, including the cultivation and trafficking of cannabis, insisting that his actions were driven not by choice but by the difficult circumstances of his small town in eastern Lebanon.
His defiance of the law, coupled with his tendency to blame the Lebanese state for his crimes, has made him a highly controversial figure.
L'Orient Today tried to contact Zaiter's lawyer, Ashraf Moussawi, for comments on the arrest, but he was unavailable at the time this article was published.
'Zaiter's drug clan frequently clashes with the Lebanese Army'
Zaiter's drug clan frequently clashes with the Lebanese Army and a rival clan, Jaafar, in the Beqaa Valley. The Zaiter and Jaafar clans have been associated with criminal activities in the al-Sharawneh neighborhood, where they exert control.
In August, Ali Mounzer Zeaiter, nicknamed 'Abu Salleh,' a leading drug trafficker, was shot and killed during a Lebanese Army operation. He had led a drug production and trafficking network active mainly in the Bekaa Valley and Beirut.
In July, the Lebanese Army dismantled one of the country's largest Captagon factories in the nearby town of Yammouneh, as part of an intensified crackdown on drug production and trafficking.
The Bekaa plain, where weapons circulate widely while the state struggles to assert its authority, is often the scene of bloody clashes between rival clans, but also sometimes between the military and heavily armed gangs.
Zaiter was also accused of sending fighters from his clan to fight alongside Hezbollah in Syria when the party intervened officially in 2012 to prevent the toppling of the Assad regime.
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