LONDON: Syrian authorities said on Wednesday that they thwarted an attempt to smuggle a large shipment of the illicit amphetamine captagon from Lebanon into the Al-Nabek district.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, working with the Internal Security Command in Rif Dimashq governorate, seized 832,000 captagon tablets and arrested one suspect, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported, citing official sources.
Authorities said that the suspect and the seized drugs had been referred to the judiciary for legal proceedings.
Al-Nabek sits along the eastern edge of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range near the Syrian desert, an area that has long served as a key corridor for cross-border smuggling.
Syria’s role in the regional captagon trade has reportedly changed since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, whose government was widely accused of profiting from the production and trafficking of the amphetamine-like drug.
