Captagon tablets found in sunflower seeds with prisoner in Lebanon
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Alaina
- . March 8, 2023
- . Update: March 8, 2023 4:16 pm
An attempt to smuggle drugs disguised as sunflower seeds into a prison in the country’s north was thwarted by Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.
Officials announced on Tuesday that a 25-year-old Lebanese man who attempted to give three bags of the seeds to a prisoner at Batroun Prison, south of Tripoli, has been detained. The captagon and Artane (benzhexol) pills, which had been cut in half, had been substituted for the sunflower seeds that had been removed from their husks.
The video of the discovery was posted on social media by the security forces. The incident’s time and the quantity of tablets seized were withheld from public disclosure. The intended recipient of the cargo and an alleged collaborator have been handed to anti-drugs authorities in Tripoli for investigation, officials said.
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The latest announcement came a day after the Internal Security Forces said it had blocked two schemes to import a total of 960,000 captagon tablets and 208 kilograms of hashish.
In April 2021, when customs officers at Jeddah Islamic Port uncovered more than five million captagon pills concealed within pomegranates, Saudi Arabia put a ban on Lebanese imports of fruits and vegetables. Later that year, in the midst of a diplomatic dispute, all imports from Lebanon were prohibited.
