By Suleiman Al-Khalidi
AMMAN (Reuters) – Jordan has foiled two plots to smuggle millions of captagon pills through a border post near Saudi Arabia, in the biggest seizure in years of drugs smuggled by Iran-linked networks operating in southern Syria to lucrative Gulf markets.
The haul was discovered hidden in construction vehicles at the Omari crossing, officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
Law enforcement authorities had for weeks tracked two separate operations bringing the consignment of drugs across Jordan’s northern border with Syria, but unlike previous drugs busts authorities made the seizure at the Saudi border.
War-ravaged Syria has become the region’s main site for the mass production of the addictive, amphetamine-type stimulant known as captagon, with Jordan a key transit route to the oil-rich Gulf states, Western anti-narcotics officials say.
Jordanian officials, like their Western allies, say that Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group and pro-Iranian militias who control much of southern Syria are behind a surge in the multi-billion-dollar drugs and weapons trade. Iran and Hezbollah deny the allegations.
U.N. experts and U.S. and European officials say the illicit drug trade finances a proliferation of pro-Iranian militias and pro-government paramilitary forces created by more than a decade of conflict in Syria.
(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Ros Russell)
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