Seized narcotic pills are displayed after Iraqi border forces intercepted two aerial balloons used in a drug smuggling attempt along the international border in Anbar governorate.
Meth seized in fuel tank at Arar crossing into Saudi Arabia
ANBAR — Iraqi authorities seized 38 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine hidden in a vehicle’s fuel tank at the Arar border crossing with Saudi Arabia and arrested members of an international trafficking network, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
Brig. Gen. Abbas al-Bahadli, spokesperson for the General Directorate of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances, said the operation was run with the Kurdistan Region’s Asayish in Sulaymaniyah, and that security forces had tracked the group before intercepting the shipment. The network used Iraq as a transit route, he told the Iraqi News Agency, and the drugs “were prepared for smuggling through the Arar border crossing to a neighboring country before reaching their intended destination.”
It follows a series of large seizures. On June 30 authorities arrested a man they described as a leading trafficker near the same crossing with 32 kilograms of Captagon. In May the National Intelligence Service said it had detained Iraqi and foreign members of a network moving more than 1 million Captagon pills and 100 kilograms of hashish through the country. Iraqi and Syrian authorities announced in April that they had seized 1 million Captagon pills and broken up a network accused of planning to distribute them inside Iraq, and in February an operation inside Syria produced five arrests and more than 200,000 pills.
Authorities say Iraq serves both as a corridor for drugs moving between neighboring countries and as a market. Smugglers on the western border have used vehicles and GPS-equipped balloons; border forces said they intercepted five balloons carrying 154 kilograms of drugs and about 893,000 pills in April.