JEDDAH (AFP) – On a table covered in a green sheet, two Saudi officers pour out thousands of white amphetamine pills they have just seized from a neighborhood in the kingdom’s Red Sea city of Jeddah.
An AFP crew accompanied the anti-narcotics agents on their raid Tuesday when police officers arrested three people carrying 28,000 Captagon tablets.
The operation -- during which AFP was requested to turn off its cameras for security reasons -- was part of the country’s efforts to crack down on dealers and smugglers of the amphetamine-type stimulant.
“The kingdom’s authorities have in the past six years foiled attempts to smuggle more than 600 million amphetamine pills”, Major Mohammed al-Nujaidi, spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s General Directorate of Narcotics Control, told AFP.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Captagon is in high demand in Saudi Arabia.
The country of 35 million, more than half of whom are under the age of 35, is witnessing unprecedented social change and has long suffered from drugs.
According to an AFP count, more than 25 million Captagon pills have been seized across the region since the start of the year.
“There have been different smuggling methods, including in fruits and vegetables, tires, rocks, building materials and furniture,” al-Nujaidi said.
Shayaa al-Moussa, a customs agent at the Jeddah port, said that all shipments arriving in the kingdom are scanned via X-ray.
“And, in case of suspicion, the containers are transferred to be searched manually,” he said.
Nujaidi said Saudi authorities seized more than 119 million amphetamine pills last year in cooperation with partners including Malaysia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.