Iraq's Interior Ministry thwarted an attempt to smuggle more than a tonne of Captagon into the country, seizing a truck from, via Turkey, carrying about seven million Captagon pills, equivalent to 1.1 tonnes of the illicit drug, the ministry said Sunday.
Authorities arrested individuals suspected of orchestrating the smuggling operation, ministry spokesman General Moqdad Miri said, though he did not specify the number of arrests.
The seizure followed a tip from Saudi Arabia’s General Directorate of Narcotics Control. The pills were concealed in a shipment of children’s toys and ironing boards, Saudi Interior Security spokesman Colonel Talal bin Abdul Mohsen bin Shalhoub stated.
The drugs were transferred from a Turkish truck to an Iraqi truck near a border crossing between the two countries, according to video footage released by the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
The bust is the latest in a series of major Captagon seizures in the region. Last week, Syria's anti-narcotics unit seized 100,000 Captagon tablets at the Jordanian border, and a day earlier, Saudi customs intercepted nearly 1.4 million pills hidden in a shipment of air conditioners.
Captagon is the brand name for fenethylline, a stimulant developed in West Germany in the 1960s to treat attention deficit disorder, narcolepsy, and depression. Banned in most countries in 1986, counterfeit Captagon pills became popular as a recreational drug in the Middle East, particularly in Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar—as well as among fighters in Syria’s civil war.
Today, the illicit pills often deviate from the original formula and may contain substances such as caffeine, the asthma drug theophylline, or paracetamol.
The recent Captagon busts show that the Captagon industry, which became Syria's biggest export during the country's civil war under the regime of Bashar Al Assad, continues to flow despite the ouster of Al Assad.
Following the regime’s collapse, reports of the Syrian government's role in flooding the region with the drug were confirmed when large quantities of Captagon manufacturing equipment and pills were discovered in military warehouses and bases across the country.
Merely a month after the overthrow of the Assad regime, Syrian security forces destroyed some hundred million Captagon pills, the raw materials used to manufacture the drug and nearly 15 tons of hashish.
