Turkey foils drug smuggling into Kingdom

A Turkish official has said that 7 million narcotic pills manufactured in Syria were seized by his country before being shipped to Saudi Arabia. The smuggling attempt was the biggest of its kind and the official denied his country’s involvement in any drug smuggling activity to Saudi Arabia.
Mohammad Yasalkaya, chief of drug and organized crime control, said at a regional symposium of drug control and information exchange that Saudi authorities were provided with detailed information about the foiled smuggling operation, which took place in Antakya.
“Some operators use containers used for transfering concrete for the purpose.
Neither sniffer dogs nor X-ray scanners can then detect the pills. We received information from our intelligence and had the cooperation of other countries in the anti-smuggling operation,” said Yasalkaya.
He explained that the production of narcotic pills in Syria began in earnest during the revolution and the country’s isolation from the Arab world. Raw materials used in the production of pills enter through the Syrian-Lebanese borders, he alleged.
“We don’t have any evidence that the rebels are producing these pills to get money to purchase weapons, but smugglers are definitely taking advantage of the chaos and the absence of security,” he added.
He said his country busted 155 tons of hashish and 13 tons of heroin in 2012.
He said the main source of the smuggled drugs was Europe, especially Bulgaria and Holland.
“Before the uprising in Syria, drugs were smuggled to Saudi Arabia from Syria through Jordan but now, the situation has changed,” he said.
He said the amount of drugs smuggled to Syria has declined because Syrians had begun producing inside their country.
He explained that drug dealers don’t need to smuggle so much raw material, as 98 percent of the ingredients are legally sold internationally and that they are used in labs to make other chemical applications, adding that Europe generally doesn’t have any reservation on the raw material used in drug production.