MAKKAH, 6 November 2007 — The Direcotrate of Public Security in Saudi Arabia has been awarded a prize by the Council of Arab Interior Ministers for launching an awareness campaign against drug addiction.
Gen. Saeed ibn Abdullah Al-Qahtani, director general of Public Security, received the award on behalf of the Ministry of Interior from the council’s secretary-general, Muhammad Ali Koman, at a function in Beirut on the sidelines of the 31st ministerial conference recently.
Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Othman ibn Nasser Al-Mahraj, chief of the General Directorate for Combating Narcotics, said Saudi authorities recently received a warning from the Brussels-based World Customs Organization that international drug pushers were planning to smuggle massive quantities of narcotic drugs into Saudi Arabia transiting through some Middle East countries.
Gen. Al-Mahraj disclosed the matter at a seminar on “strategies to counter drug trafficking” held in Dubai last week. Drugs such as hashish, opium and Captagon tablets come to the Kingdom from Turkey via Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Sudan, he said.
Al-Mahraj added that the General Directorate for Combating Narcotics was largely successful in tackling drugs in the past few years.
“With the help and cooperation of anti-narcotic departments in Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and the Gulf countries, we have foiled attempts to smuggle in huge quantities of narcotics. The new system regulating truck movement across borders has proved greatly effective in minimizing drug smuggling,” Gen. Al-Mahraj said in a paper presented at the forum.
