From fake favas to 'smuggler sheep': How captagon is trafficked
Stitched into the bellies of "smuggler sheep" or loaded onto drones and ultralight planes, captagon is crossing the Middle East's borders in ever more creative ways.
Smugglers have hidden pills in huge tubs of tomato paste, packed them in hollowed out pomegranates or even painstakingly stuffed them, one by one, into pitted olives. The pills have also been hidden in fake fava beans, artificial oranges and ornate stone frescoes.
The creativity of smugglers continues to astound the authorities, with seizures more often the result of tip-offs than the technological prowess of customs checks.
Here are some of the most unusual smuggling methods foiled in recent years:
- Pomegranates -
More than 5.3 million pills were found by the Saudi authorities in a large shipment of pomegranates in April 2021, with the drugs stuffed inside some of the fruit. The seizure led to a Saudi ban on fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon.
- Live sheep -
Fastening weapons or drugs to livestock to cross borders is an age-old smuggling trick. Latin American cartels took this a step further by stitching bags of cocaine and heroin into dogs and other animals. In November 2021 Kuwaiti authorities found 17 kilos of captagon pills inside live imported sheep.
- Fake oranges -
Lebanese authorities found nine million pills hidden in fake plastic oranges heading to the Gulf in December 2021. A week earlier, 1.1 million pills stuffed into fake lemons were intercepted by Emirati customs.
- Stuffed olives -
Jordan's anti-narcotics squad arrested a smuggler with 37,000 pills concealed in pitted green olives in April 2015. Syria's drug unit arrested a man in December last year who had stuffed 160,000 pills into olives after stoning thousands of them.
- Tomato paste lids -
Saudi authorities found more than two million pills hidden in the hollowed-out lids of tomato paste jars in July 2021.
- Trolley wheels -
In the largest ever seizure of captagon, Malaysian customs found 94.8 million pills at Port Klang in March 2021 hidden in a shipment of trolley wheels. The drugs were not intended for the Malaysian market. Three weeks later, another three million pills were found in the same port hidden in a shipment of door parts.
- Microlight plane -
Iraqi security forces opened fire on a microlight aircraft near the Kuwaiti border in June 2022. The pilot got away but one million captagon pills were found in the abandoned aircraft.
Source: Agence France Presse
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