Saudi counter-narcotics authorities assist Iraq in thwarting smuggling of 7 million Captagon bills

Update Iraq’s security forces have seized an estimated 1.1 ton of captagon pills hidden inside a truck that entered Iraq from Syria via Turkiye, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday. (Screenshots)
Iraq’s security forces have seized an estimated 1.1 ton of captagon pills hidden inside a truck that entered Iraq from Syria via Turkiye, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday. (Screenshots)
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Updated 16 March 2025
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Saudi counter-narcotics authorities assist Iraq in thwarting smuggling of 7 million Captagon bills

Saudi counter-narcotics authorities assist Iraq in thwarting smuggling of 7 million Captagon bills
  • Criminals concealed drugs within a shipment of children's toys and ironing boards
  • It is the first such seizure announced since the toppling in December of Syrian president Bashar Assad

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s counter-narcotics authorities assisted their Iraqi counterparts on Sunday to thwart an attempt to smuggle millions of toxic amphetamine pills.

Col. Talal bin Abdul Mohsen bin Shalhoub, the security spokesman of the Ministry of Interior, said Iraqi authorities seized 7 million amphetamine pills based on information supplied from the ministry and the General Directorate of Narcotics Control.

Criminals had concealed the drugs within a shipment of children’s toys and ironing boards, the Saudi News Agency reported.

Iraqi authorities cooperated positively, he added, and seized the narcotics shipment, affirming Riyadh and Baghdad’s commitment to countering drug smuggling and confronting criminal networks.

The drug shipment is the largest ever seized in Iraq. With assistance from Saudi Arabia, Iraqi authorities tracked and intercepted the shipment as it traveled from Syria, through Turkiye, and toward the Iraqi territory.

Western anti-narcotics officials say the addictive, amphetamine-type stimulant known as captagon has for years been mass-produced in Syria.

Captagon — a mix of amphetamines also known as the “poor man’s cocaine” — is one of the more popular recreational drugs among affluent youth in the Middle East.

It was the first such seizure announced since the toppling in December of Syrian president Bashar Assad, whose government was at the heart of the trade in areas he controlled, experts have said.

Captagon became Syria’s largest export during the country’s civil war that began in 2011.

Iraq in 2022 announced it had seized six million pills, and in 2024 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) said the country had experienced a “dramatic increase” in both the trafficking and use of captagon in the previous five years.

“In 2023 alone, authorities (in Iraq) seized a record-high 24 million captagon tablets — the equivalent of over 4.1 tons, with an estimated retail value of between $84 million and $144 million,” a UNDOC report said.

It said that between 2019 and 2023, about 82 percent of the captagon seized in the Middle East originated from Syria, followed by Lebanon at 17 percent.

The new authorities in Damascus have announced the destruction of around 100 million captagon pills but the trade persists, a diplomatic source who follows the issue said.

“Lower-ranking operators are showing resilience, adapting, and remaining in place despite political or security changes,” the source said.

“It is therefore not surprising to see trafficking continue, whether through the sale of existing stockpiles or the establishment of new production.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said that trafficking from Syria was ongoing and that there were still captagon factories operating in the country.

* With AFP

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Lebanon says two dead in strikes as Israel says killed Hezbollah militant

Lebanon says two dead in strikes as Israel says killed Hezbollah militant
Updated 11 min 29 sec ago
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Lebanon says two dead in strikes as Israel says killed Hezbollah militant

Lebanon says two dead in strikes as Israel says killed Hezbollah militant
  • The Israeli military said its air force “struck and eliminated” a member of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force
  • Israel has continued to strike Lebanon since the November 27 ceasefire

BEIRUT: Lebanon reported two dead in separate Israeli strikes on the country’s south Wednesday, as Israel’s military said it had killed a Hezbollah operative, despite a ceasefire between the two sides.
A “drone strike launched by the Israeli enemy on a vehicle in Wadi Al-Hujair killed one person,” Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement, referring to an area around 12 kilometers (seven miles) from the border.
It later said a separate Israeli strike in Hanin, elsewhere in the south near the border, “killed one person and wounded another.”
The Israeli military said its air force “struck and eliminated” a member of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force in the Qantara area, near Wadi Al-Hujair.
Israel has continued to strike Lebanon since the November 27 ceasefire that largely halted more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, including two months of all-out war.
The health ministry also said a 17-year-old wounded in an Israeli strike on south Lebanon’s Aitaroun on Tuesday had died, bringing the toll in that raid to two dead.
The Israeli military said that strike also killed a Hezbollah operative.
The United Nations Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that “at least 71 civilians” had been killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon since the ceasefire.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said last week that 186 people had been killed since the truce, without saying how many were members of the group.
The health ministry has not responded to AFP requests for updated figures.
The truce accord was based on a UN Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and United Nations peacekeepers should be the only forces in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Under the truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw fighters from south of Lebanon’s Litani River and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure there.
Israel was to pull out all its forces from south Lebanon, although it continues to hold five positions that it deems “strategic.”
Lebanon’s army has been deploying in the south near the border as Israeli forces have withdrawn.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP on Saturday that the group had ceded to the Lebanese army around 190 of its 265 military positions identified south of the Litani.


Sudanese paramilitary group says its forming a rival government

Sudanese paramilitary group says its forming a rival government
Updated 16 April 2025
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Sudanese paramilitary group says its forming a rival government

Sudanese paramilitary group says its forming a rival government
  • The move came as the RSF suffered multiple battlefield setbacks, losing the capital, Khartoum and other urban cities in recent months
  • It raises concerns that Sudan is heading toward partition, or a prolonged conflict like that one in neighboring Libya where two rival administrations have been fighting for power for over a decade

CAIRO: A notorious paramilitary group fighting against the Sudanese military announced that it was forming a rival government, which will rule parts of the country controlled by the group including the western Darfur region where the United Nations says recent attacks by the group have killed over 400 people.
Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the Rapid Support Forces, announced the move in a speech on Tuesday as the northeastern African nation marked two years of civil war.
“On this anniversary, we proudly declare the establishment of the Government of Peace and Unity,” Dagalo said in a recorded speech, adding that other groups have joined the RSF-led administration, including a faction of the Sudan’s Liberation Movement, which controls parts of Kordofan region.
Dagalo, who is sanctioned by the US over accusations that his forces committed genocide in Darfur, said that he and his allies were also establishing “a 15-member Presidential Council” representing all of Sudan’s regions.
The move came as the RSF suffered multiple battlefield setbacks, losing the capital, Khartoum and other urban cities in recent months. The paramilitary group has since regrouped in its stronghold in the sprawling region of Darfur.
It raises concerns that Sudan is heading toward partition, or a prolonged conflict like that one in neighboring Libya where two rival administrations have been fighting for power for over a decade. The nation of South Sudan won independence from Sudan in a 2011 referendum that followed a war in which Janjaweed militias, a predecessor to the RSF, fought on behalf of the government.
The Janjaweed were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities.
Many countries, including the US, have rejected the RSF efforts to establish an administration in areas they control.
“Attempts to establish a parallel government are unhelpful for peace & security for the country, and risk further instability & de facto partition of the country,” the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs posted on X in March when the RSF and its allies signed what they called “transitional constitution” in a Kenya-hosted conference.
Sudan was plunged into chaos on April 15, 2023 when simmering tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into open warfare across the country.
Since then, at least 24,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher. The war has driven about 13 million people from their homes, including 4 million who have crossed into neighboring countries, and pushed parts of the country into famine.
The fighting has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in Darfur, according to the UN and international rights groups.
Dagalo’s announcement has come a few days after his forces and allied militias rampaged through two famine-hit camps, which shelter some 700,000 Sudanese who fled their homes, in North Darfur province.
The multi-day attack on the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps killed more than 400 people, including 12 aid workers and dozens of children, the UN humanitarian office said, citing local sources.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday the attack forced up to 400,000 people to flee the Zamzam camp in recent days.
He said the camp has become inaccessible after the RSF and its allied militias took control of it, “restricting the movement of those remaining, especially young people.”


Israel will keep Gaza buffer zone, minister says, as ceasefire efforts stall

Israel will keep Gaza buffer zone, minister says, as ceasefire efforts stall
Updated 16 April 2025
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Israel will keep Gaza buffer zone, minister says, as ceasefire efforts stall

Israel will keep Gaza buffer zone, minister says, as ceasefire efforts stall
  • Since resuming their operation last month, Israeli forces have carved out a broad “security zone” extending deep into Gaza
  • Comments from Katz underscore how far away the two sides remain from any ceasefire agreement

JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Israeli troops will remain in the buffer zones they have created in Gaza even after any settlement to end the war, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday, as efforts to revive a ceasefire agreement faltered.
Since resuming their operation last month, Israeli forces have carved out a broad “security zone” extending deep into Gaza and squeezing more than 2 million Palestinians into ever smaller areas in the south and along the coastline.
“Unlike in the past, the IDF is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” Katz said in a statement following a meeting with military commanders, adding that “tens of percent” of Gaza had been added to the zone.
“The IDF will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and the communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza — as in Lebanon and Syria.”
In southern Gaza alone, Israeli forces have seized about 20 percent of the enclave’s territory, taking control of the border city of Rafah and pushing inland up to the so-called “Morag corridor” that runs from the eastern edge of Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea between Rafah and the city of Khan Younis.
It already held a wide corridor across the central Netzarim area and has extended a buffer zone all around the border hundreds of meters inland, including the Shejaia area just to the east of Gaza City in the north.
Israel says its forces have killed hundreds of Hamas fighters, including many senior commanders of the Palestinian militant group, but the operation has alarmed the United Nations and European countries.
More than 400,000 Palestinians have been displaced since hostilities resumed on March 18 after two months of relative calm, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA and Israeli air strikes and bombardments have killed at least 1,630 people.
Medical charity MSF said Gaza had become a “mass grave” with humanitarian groups struggling to provide aid. “We are witnessing in real time the destruction and forced displacement of the entire population in Gaza,” Amande Bazerolle, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza said in a statement.
Katz said Israel, which has blocked the delivery of aid supplies into the territory, was creating infrastructure to allow distribution through civilian companies at a later date. But he said the blockade on aid would remain in place.
He said Israel would push forward with a plan to allow Gazans who wished to leave the enclave to do so, although it remains unclear which countries would be willing to accept large numbers of Palestinians.

Red lines
The comments from Katz, repeating Israel’s demand on Hamas to disarm, underscore how far away the two sides remain from any ceasefire agreement, despite efforts by Egyptian mediators to revive efforts to reach a deal.
Hamas has repeatedly described calls to disarm as a red line it will not cross and has said Israeli troops must withdraw from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.
“Any truce lacking real guarantees for halting the war, achieving full withdrawal, lifting the blockade, and beginning reconstruction will be a political trap,” Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday.
Two Israeli officials said this week that there had been no progress in the talks despite media reports of a possible truce to allow the exchange of some of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli officials have said the increased military pressure will force Hamas to release the hostages but the government has faced large demonstrations by Israeli protesters demanding a deal to stop the fighting and get them back.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the October 2023 attack by Hamas on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
The offensive has killed at least 51,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and devastated the coastal enclave, forcing most of the population to move multiple times and reducing broad areas to rubble.
On Wednesday, Palestinian medical authorities said an airstrike killed 10 people, including Fatema Hassouna, a well-known writer and photographer who had documented the war. A strike on another house further north killed three, they said.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Israel’s suspension of the entry of fuel, medical, and food supplies since early March had begun to obstruct the work of the few remaining working hospitals, with medical supplies drying up.
“Hundreds of patients and wounded individuals are deprived of essential medications, and their suffering is worsening due to the closure of border crossings,” the ministry said.


Gaza hospital chief held in ‘inhumane’ conditions by Israel: lawyer

Gaza hospital chief held in ‘inhumane’ conditions by Israel: lawyer
Updated 16 April 2025
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Gaza hospital chief held in ‘inhumane’ conditions by Israel: lawyer

Gaza hospital chief held in ‘inhumane’ conditions by Israel: lawyer
  • Abu Safiya was subjected to interrogations involving beatings, mistreatment and torture.
  • In January, rights group Amnesty International demanded Abu Safiya’s release, citing witness testimonies describing “the horrifying reality” in Israeli prisons.

NAZARETH: The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital who was detained by Israeli forces in December is being held in “inhumane” conditions by Israel and subjected to “physical and psychological intimidation,” his lawyer told AFP.
Hussam Abu Safiya, a 52-year-old paediatrician, rose to prominence last year by posting about the dire conditions in his besieged hospital in Beit Lahia during a major Israeli offensive.
On December 27, Israeli forces began an assault on the facility which they labelled a Hamas “terrorist center,” and arrested dozens of medical staff including Abu Safiya.
The military accused him of being a “Hamas operative.”
Abu Safiya’s lawyer, Gheed Qassem, was able to visit the doctor on March 19 in Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.
“He is suffering greatly, he is exhausted from the torture, the pressure and the humiliation he has endured to force him to confess to acts he did not commit,” said Qassem who met an AFP correspondent in Nazareth.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment from AFP about the conditions in which Abu Safiya is being held.
After initially spending two weeks in the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel’s Negev desert, Abu Safiya was transferred to Ofer, where Israel keeps hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
In Sde Teiman, Abu Safiya was subjected to interrogations “involving beatings, mistreatment and torture,” Qassem said, before he was transferred to a cramped cell in Ofer for 25 days, where he was also subjected to questioning.
The Israeli authorities have designated the medic an “illegal combatant” for an “unlimited period of time,” Qassem said, and his case has been designated confidential by the military, meaning Abu Safiya’s defense cannot access the files.
She denounced what she said were restrictions imposed on legal visits, which have prevented lawyers from informing detainees about “the war, the date, the time or their geographic location.”
Her meeting with Abu Safiya, which took place under tight surveillance, lasted for only 17 minutes, she said.
Adopted in 2002, Israel’s law concerning “illegal combatants” permits the detention of suspected members of “hostile forces” outside of normal legal frameworks.
In January, rights group Amnesty International demanded Abu Safiya’s release, citing witness testimonies describing “the horrifying reality” in Israeli prisons, where Palestinian detainees are subjected to “systematic acts of torture and other mistreatment.”
A social media campaign using the hashtag #FreeDrHussamAbuSafiya has brought together health care organizations, celebrities and UN leaders.
That includes the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who demanded Abu Safiya’s release in a post on X.
Qassem warned that her client’s health was “very worrying.”
“He is suffering from arterial tension, cardiac arrhythmia and vision problems,” she said, adding “he has lost 20 kilos in two months and fractured four ribs during interrogations, without receiving proper medical care.”
The doctor remains calm, she said, but “wonders what crime he has committed” to be subjected to “such inhumane conditions.”
According to the lawyer, Abu Safiya’s jailers are demanding that he confess to having operated on members of Hamas or Israeli hostages held in Gaza, but he has refused to do so and denies the accusations.
The doctor insists that he is just a paediatrician, “and everything he did was out of a moral, professional and human duty toward the patients and the wounded,” Qassem said.
Since October 7, 2023, around 5,000 Gazans have been arrested by Israel, and some were subsequently released in exchange for hostages held in Gaza.
In general, they are accused of “belonging to a terrorist organization” or of posing “a threat to Israel’s security,” the lawyer said.
Qassem said that a number of detainees are being held without charge or trial and that their lawyers often did not know where their clients were during the first months of the war.


Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia prepares for next big quake

Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia prepares for next big quake
Updated 16 April 2025
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Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia prepares for next big quake

Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia prepares for next big quake
  • Hagia Sophia a World Heritage Site and Turkiye’s most visited landmark

Istanbul: The Hagia Sophia of Istanbul is no stranger to change — through the centuries the city’s architectural jewel has gone from church to mosque to museum, back to mosque again.
But the latest renovation aims not only to restore the wonders of the 1,488-year gem, but to ensure it survives the next earthquake to hit the ancient city.
From afar, its dome, shimmering rock and delicate minarets appear to watch over Istanbul, as they have for centuries.
As visitors get closer however, they see scaffolding covering its eastern facade and one of the minarets.
While “the renovation of course breaks a little bit the atmosphere of the appearance from the outside” and the “scaffolding takes away the aesthetic of the monument... renovation is a must,” said Abdullah Yilmaz, a guide.
Hagia Sophia, a World Heritage Site and Turkiye’s most visited landmark, “constantly has problems,” Hasan Firat Diker, an architecture professor working on the restoration, told AFP.
That is why it has undergone numerous piecemeal reconstructions over the centuries, he added.
'Global’ makeover'
The current makeover is the first time the site will undergo a “global restoration,” including the dome, walls and minarets, he said.
When it was first completed in AD 537, on the same spot where previous churches had stood, the Hagia Sophia became known as a shining example of the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, which ruled the city known as Constantinople at the time.
It served as a church until the fall of the city to the Ottomans in 1453, when it became a mosque.
In 1935, Mustafa Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkiye who forcibly remade the country into a secular one, turned the building into a museum.
It remained as such until 2020, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a practicing Muslim who came to power at the head of an Islamist-rooted party, turned it back into a mosque.
Next big quake
Like the residents of this historic city, the Hagia Sophia has not only had to contend with the whims of its rulers — it faces the constant danger from earthquakes that have regularly struck the metropolis, the last major one in 1999.
Like many buildings in the city of 16 million, which lies just kilometers from an active seismic fault line, Hagia Sophia does not meet building earthquake standards.
Its dome collapsed in an earthquake in 558 and the building has been damaged in other quakes that have hit the city since.
So the main goal of the restoration under way is to “reinforce the building against the next big earthquake” so that the ancient structure “survives the event with the least damage possible,” said Ahmet Gulec, a member of the scientific committee supervising the works.
For the moment specialists are studying the dome to determine how best to both reinforce and restore it, Diker said.
The interior is for now free of any scaffolding. But eventually four huge pillars will be erected inside to support a platform from where specialists will restore the dome’s paintings and mosaics.
“Once you’re inside... it’s perfect,” marvelled Ana Delgado, a 49-year-old tourist from Mexico as the hum of laughter, conversation and movement filled the building following afternoon prayers.
“It’s magic,” chimed in her friend, Elias Erduran, from the Dominican Republic.
Millions of visitors
Hagia Sophia saw 7.7 million visitors stream through its spacious interior last year.
Around 2.1 million of them are foreign tourists, many of whom pay 25 euros for an entry ticket, generating millions of euros annually.
Officials hope the inside pillars will not deter visitors from coming during the works, which are expected to last for several years. Officials have not said how much the renovation is expected to cost.
“The objective is that the visits and prayers continue” during the works, Gulec said.
And even if some visitors are disappointed not to have witnessed the building in all its glory, the important thing “is that one day my children will also be able to admire Saint Sophia,” said Yana Galitskaya, a 35-year-old visitor from Russia.