Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi 

 

by AFP — BEIRUT: Lebanese security forces seized over five million captagon pills hidden inside construction material, the interior minister said on Tuesday, in the latest bust of the amphetamine-type stimulant. Officers seized “a large quantity of captagon” during a raid on a warehouse in the southern Lebanese city of Ghazieh, Bassam Mawlawi said in a statement. The illegal shipment of pills was labelled as heading to Sudan via Ivory Coast, but it is unclear if that was the true destination. In January, authorities seized a large quantity of captagon hidden inside a tea shipment, bound for Saudi Arabia via Togo. Lebanese authorities have ramped up efforts to counter captagon production and trafficking after backlash from conservative Gulf nations, where most shipments are headed