BEIRUT: Lebanon has vowed to punish drug smugglers after massive quantities of narcotics were intercepted and seized by Saudi Arabia and Greece.
Saudi authorities on Friday reported foiling an attempt to smuggle millions of amphetamine pills stashed in a pomegranate shipment from Lebanon at Dammam’s King Abdulaziz Port. It said that five people involved in the case were arrested, four citizens and an expatriate.
There was another interception of a pomegranate shipment, also from Lebanon and also containing drugs, in Jeddah.
Shortly after the Saudi statement, Greek authorities announced seizing four tons of cannabis hidden in dessert-making machinery at Piraeus that was en route from Lebanon to Slovakia. The value of the drugs was estimated to be around €33 million ($39 million).
The Greeks said they received help on the case from Saudi Arabia’s drug enforcement agency.
Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry said that smuggling drugs in containers or trucks carrying fruit and vegetables from Lebanon to foreign countries was punishable by law. “Smuggling drugs harms the Lebanese economy, farmers and reputation,” the statement added.
It urged authorities to exert “utmost efforts” to control all smuggling operations on border crossings in light of the laws that criminalized drug use, trafficking and smuggling.
Saudi Arabia said that Lebanese fruit and vegetable imports would be banned from Sunday because authorities had noticed an increase in smuggling operations targeting the Kingdom using Lebanese products.
The Kingdom’s ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Al-Bukhari, said that the safety and security of the country and its people were the motives behind the ban.
“Drug smuggling into the Kingdom reveals the extent of the challenges from local and international criminal networks being faced by Saudi Arabia,” he told local media.
A security source told Arab News that the seized cargo was not Lebanese but had a Syrian certificate of origin, transiting through Lebanon from Syria between April 10 and 15.
Ibrahim Tarshishi, who is the head of the Bekaa Farmers’ Association, said Lebanon’s agricultural producers were innocent of smuggling drugs into Saudi Arabia, which imported more than 50,000 tons of Lebanese produce every year.
He expressed his fears about the ban’s impact.
“Lebanese authorities must contact their Saudi counterparts as soon as possible to confirm that Lebanon has no intention whatsoever of harming the Kingdom,” he told Arab News. “Saudi Arabia is the largest importing country of our agricultural produce. Exports were supposed to kick off in May. The Saudi decision means that our exports will not reach further than Jordan and will not be transited through the Kingdom to the rest of the Gulf states. This is a disaster that threatens the whole agricultural sector in Lebanon.”
Lebanon did not have pomegranates to export and had been importing them from Syria, Egypt and Tunisia for the last 20 years, he said.
“We export our vegetables, citrus, peaches, pears, apricots and cherries to Saudi Arabia. This export relationship with Saudi Arabia was established 50 years ago and the exports are carried out by land, sea and air, and our work is completely legal.”
Non-Lebanese agricultural cargo had transited through Lebanon and the drugs that were seized turned out to be smuggled in Syrian trucks, he said.
“Lebanese farmers have nothing to do with this matter. The cargo is controlled by Lebanese Customs. They go through a scanner at the Masnaa border crossing with Syria. However, scanners at Beirut airport have been damaged since the Beirut blast on Aug. 4. New scanners were provided but have not been installed yet. Therefore, cargo is emptied at the free zone where a customs’ member handles the cargo before they are shipped.”
The founding committee of the Lebanese-Saudi Friendship Association issued a statement expressing regret over the actions that had led the Kingdom to introduce the import ban. It was “proof of the regressive level” that Lebanon had reached due to some people trying “to take control of the country and its assets and seeking to jeopardize its public institutions,” the statement added.
Lebanon’s security bodies have pounced on many drug factories, especially ones producing Captagon pills in the Bekaa valley, as well as drugs to be smuggled abroad.
On April 10, Hassan Daqou was arrested over suspicions of drug dealing, production and smuggling. He is from the town of Tufail, which is 57 kilometers from Damascus.
The former mufti of Baalbek, Sheikh Ayman Al-Rifai, said that the Hermel region suffered from drug use, dealing and production.
“This has led to several social problems and family issues that we are trying to solve,” he told Arab News, saying he wished that authorities would carry out more raids and arrests.
Lebanon vows to punish drug smugglers as Saudi import ban bites
https://arab.news/mmvy2
Lebanon vows to punish drug smugglers as Saudi import ban bites
- Smuggling hurts economy and reputation, says Foreign Ministry
- Greek authorities announced seizing cannabis hidden in machinery at Piraeus that was en route from Lebanon to Slovakia
‘Protect our people’: Armed Syrian volunteers watch over Damascus
- Local committees have taken over some of the deserted checkpoints, with the authorities’ approval
- Committees had been set up to patrol neighborhoods to prevent crime until the police could take over
After Islamist-led militants ousted former president Bashar Assad in early December, thousands of soldiers, policemen and other security officials deserted their posts, leaving the door open to petty theft, looting and other crimes.
The new Syrian authorities now face the mammoth challenge of rebuilding state institutions shaped by the Assad family’s five-decade rule, including the army and security apparatuses that have all but collapsed.
In the meantime, Damascenes have jumped into action.
In the Old City, Fadi Raslan, 42, was among dozens of people cautiously watching the streets, his finger on the trigger of his gun.
“We have women and elderly people at home. We are trying to protect our people with this volunteer-based initiative,” he said.
“Syria needs us right now, we must stand together.”
Local committees have taken over some of the deserted checkpoints, with the authorities’ approval.
Hussam Yahya, 49, and his friends have been taking turns guarding their neighborhood, Shughur, inspecting vehicles.
“We came out to protect our neighborhoods, shops and public property as volunteers, without any compensation,” he said.
He said the new authorities, led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group, have backed their initiative, providing light arms and training.
Authorities also provided them with special “local committee” cards, valid for a year.
Police chief Ahmad Lattouf said the committees had been set up to patrol neighborhoods to prevent crime until the police could take over.
“There aren’t enough police officers at the moment, but training is ongoing to increase our numbers,” he said.
The Damascus committees begin their neighborhood watches at 22:00 (19:00 GMT) every night and end them at 06:00 (03:00 GMT) the next morning.
Further north, in the cities of Aleppo and Homs, ordinary residents have also taken up weapons to guard their districts with support from authorities, residents said.
The official page of the Damascus countryside area has published photos on Telegram showing young men it said were “volunteering” to protect their town and villages “under the supervision of the Military Operations Department and in coordination with General Security.”
It also said others were volunteering as traffic police.
A handful of police officers affiliated with the Salvation Government of the Idlib region, the militant bastion controlled by HTS before Assad’s fall, have also been deployed in Damascus.
Traffic policemen have been called from Idlib to help, while HTS gunmen are everywhere in the capital, especially in front of government buildings including the presidential palace and police headquarters.
The authorities have also begun allowing Syrians to apply to the police academy to fill its depleted ranks.
Syria’s new rulers have called on conscripts and soldiers to surrender their weapons at dedicated centers.
Since rising to power, HTS and its allies have launched security sweeps in major cities including Homs and Aleppo with the stated goal of rooting out “remnants of Assad’s militias.”
In the capital’s busy Bab Touma neighborhood, four local watchmen were checking people’s IDs and inspecting cars entering the district.
Fuad Farha said he founded the local committee that he now heads after offering his help to “establish security” alongside the HTS-affiliated security forces.
“We underwent a quick training, mainly teaching us how to assemble weapons and take them apart and to use rifles,” he said.
Residents said that the committees had been effective against burglars and thieves.
“We all need to bear responsibility for our neighborhood, our streets and our country,” Farha said.
“Only this way will we be able to rebuild our country.”
Macron says West must be cautious over new Syria rulers
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday the West must not be naive about the new authorities in Syria after the ousting of Bashar Assad and promised France would not abandon Kurdish fighters.
“We must regard the regime change in Syria without naivety,” Macron said in a speech to French ambassadors after Islamist-led forces toppled Assad last month, adding France would not abandon “freedom fighters, like the Kurds” who are fighting extremist groups in Syria.
UN: Over 30 million in need of aid in war-torn Sudan
- Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced
- Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: More than 30 million people, over half of them children, are in need of aid in Sudan after twenty months of war, the United Nations said on Monday.
The UN has launched a $4.2 billion call for funds, targeting 20.9 million people across Sudan from a total of 30.4 million people it said are in need in what it called “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
Sudan has been torn apart and pushed to the brink of famine by the war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced, which, in addition to 2.7 million displaced before the war, has made Sudan the world’s largest internal displacement crisis.
A further 3.3 million people have fled across Sudan’s borders to escape the war, which means over a quarter of the country’s pre-war population, estimated at around 50 million, are now uprooted.
Famine has already been declared in five areas in Sudan and is expected to take hold of five more areas by May, with 8.1 million people currently on the brink of mass starvation.
Sudan’s army-aligned government has denied there is famine, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
For much of the conflict, the UN has struggled to raise even a quarter of the funds it has targeted for its humanitarian response in the impoverished northeast African country.
Sudan has often been called the world’s “forgotten” war, overshadowed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine despite the scale of the horrors inflicted upon civilians.
Jordanian FM discusses rebuilding Syria in Turkiye talks
DUBAI: The Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi highlighted on Tuesday the need to help Syria regain its security, stability, and sovereignty during discussions in Turkiye.
Talks also focused on providing support to the Syrian people and addressing the challenge of rebuilding the war-torn country.
He underscored Jordan's firm stance against any aggression on Syria’s sovereignty, rejecting Israeli attacks on Syrian territory.
The minister also expressed solidarity with Turkey, supporting its rights in confronting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), emphasizing the importance of regional cooperation to ensure peace and stability.
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
