DUBAI, 15 September 2004 — Police in Abu Dhabi have foiled an attempt to smuggle more than a ton of hashish worth $6.5 million into Saudi Arabia.
The consignment of drugs from Asia was stuffed into electrical cables shipped in a container which arrived at an Abu Dhabi port last month, said a spokesman at the anti-narcotics unit of Abu Dhabi police.
A team from the anti-narcotics squad secretly followed the shipment to Saudi Arabia, where the eight-member gang of traffickers, all Asians, were caught red-handed emptying the cables, the daily said.
The masterminds of the smuggling operation wanted to avoid the tough inspection process at all Saudi ports, and thought consignments entering the Kingdom by road from the UAE would not be inspected so thoroughly, given the large volume of goods passing between the two countries.
Maj. Gen. Sheikh Said ibn Zayed Al-Nahayan, deputy interior minister, said the undercover operation took nearly one year of coordination with the Saudi authorities.
He said the busting of the gang was a serious blow to drug trafficking through the UAE and described it as a “classic example of patience and professionalism” on the part of the Gulf’s law-enforcement authorities.
