Syrian authorities announced Tuesday, November 30, the seizure of more than half a ton of captagon hidden in a shipment of pasta bound for Saudi Arabia, the second such catch in less than a week.
The official Syrian agency Sana released images of a large number of sachets containing the pills.
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Some 525 kg of captagon pills ... were seized from a shipment of pasta intended for export to Saudi Arabia,
" she said.
Read alsoItaly: record seizure of 14 tonnes of amphetamines produced in Syria by the Islamic State
Captagon, an amphetamine taken from an old psychotropic drug, is manufactured in particular in Lebanon and probably also in Syria and Iraq.
Already on November 24, the Syrian army announced that it had seized half a ton of this amphetamine hidden in a shipment of pasta before it was exported.
Syrian exports amounted to billions of dollars
The Syrian authorities regularly announce the seizure of these amphetamines: in October, they indicated having discovered in Damascus 180,000 captagon pills hidden in a box of oriental pastries.
In the same month, more than four million of these pills were seized from a vehicle on the Damascus-Homs highway.
According to an EU-funded report by the Center for Operational Analysis and Research, exports of captagon from Syria reached a market value of at least $ 3.46 billion in 2020. In Italy, the Authorities seized in July 2020 a record shipment of 14 tonnes of this drug (84 million pills) from Syria.
In April, Saudi Arabia suspended fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon after discovering more than five million pills concealed in pomegranates believed to have come from Syria and passed through Lebanon.