LONDON: Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces foiled an attempt to smuggle narcotics concealed in sunflower seeds into a prison in the north of the country.
A 25-year-old Lebanese man who tried to deliver three bags of the seeds to an inmate at Batroun Prison, south of Tripoli, has been arrested, officials said on Tuesday. The sunflower seeds had been removed from their husks and replaced with captagon and Artane (benzhexol) pills that were split in half.
Security forces shared this video on social media of the find.
The date of the incident and the amount of pills seized were not immediately revealed. The intended recipient of the delivery and an alleged accomplice have been referred to anti-drugs authorities in Tripoli for investigation, officials said.
The latest announcement came a day after the Internal Security Forces revealed it had thwarted two plots to smuggle a total of 960,000 captagon pills and 208 kilograms of hashish.
Saudi Arabia imposed a ban on Lebanese imports of fruit and vegetables in April 2021 after customs officials at Jeddah Islamic Port seized more than five million captagon pills hidden inside pomegranates. All imports from Lebanon were banned later that year amid a diplomatic row.
In October 2022, Lebanese customs seized about 160,000 captagon pills at Beirut’s international airport that officials said were destined for Oman via the Qatari capital, Doha.
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