'Over 1 million Captagon pills seized this month'

AMMAN — Anti-Narcotics Department (AND) agents on Tuesday announced that seven people were arrested over the past two weeks in connection with the attempted distribution and smuggling of over 1 million Captagon pills.

“We arrested seven people, including three Arab nationals, in six separate operations,” a senior AND official told The Jordan Times.

The official said AND agents are searching for a Jordanian who allegedly abandoned bags filled with over 1 million Captagon pills near the Jordanian-Saudi border.

“We were monitoring a man who had kept a large amount of Captagon pills in bags that he planned to smuggle to Saudi Arabia, but when he felt we were closing in on him he dumped the bags and fled,” the official added.

A second official told The Jordan Times that the department has “good knowledge of his identity and it is a matter of time before he is arrested”.

In another incident, according to the second official, agents in Irbid arrested an Arab national and his wife, both in their 60s, who were in possession of 38,000 narcotic pills that they planned to sell.

“We received a tip about the couple and arrested them before they were able to sell any of the illegal narcotic pills,” the second official explained.

A total of 1.13 million Captagon pills were seized during the past two weeks, according to a statement issued by the Public Security Department (PSD).

“No one was injured during the operations,” the senior AND official said.

He added that operations are conducted 24 hours a day to abort “similar attempts to smuggle these illegal drugs abroad or distribute them in the local market”.

“Most of the seized drugs are destined for a neighbouring country because the margin of profit is very high,” the official noted.

Drug smugglers target rich countries “because one Captagon pill is worth at least JD7 in these states, while its market value in Jordan does not exceed JD1 per pill,” officials have previously said.

Earlier this year, AND Director Brig. Gen. Sami Askar said the department dealt with 7,713 cases involving illegal narcotics, including 712 cases of drug trafficking, between May 2013 and May this year.

A total of 10,792 individuals were arrested during this period, 1,296 of them non-Jordanians, according to Askar.

Illegal narcotics seized during the same period comprised 664kg of hashish, 6,719kg of marijuana, 2,466,918 Captagon pills, 331kg of cocaine, 219kg of heroin, 24kg of opium and 43,107,011 illegal drug pills.