Drugs suspect who fled Jordan killed in air strike on family home in southern Syria

A drug dealer wanted by Jordan was reported to have been killed in an air strike in southern Syria yesterday, Jordanian state television said.

The report said Murei Al Ramthan, who was suspected of operating a cross-border illicit drugs business in southern Syria, was killed in a village in Suweida governorate, close to the border with Jordan.

Mr Al Ramthan was charged with drug offences by a Jordanian security court in July and given 10 days to surrender.

His death was first reported by news sites linked to the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack and no official comment from Damascus.

The incident came a day after Arab League members agreed to reinstate Syria to the body, with one of the conditions being that Damascus act to halt the flow of narcotics to neighbouring countries.

A Syrian opposition source in Amman told The National that Mr Al Ramthan, who was a Syrian citizen, was “the most important local border drug player, by far”.

Asked about the raid, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi did not explicitly rule out Jordanian involvement. “When we take any step to protect our national security, we will declare it. We will declare it at the right time,” he said after a meeting with Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra in the Jordanian capital.

Mr Safadi said Jordan was seeking co-operation from the Syrian government to tackle the drug trade.

On Friday, Mr Safadi told CNN that if Jordan did not see Damascus taking “effective measures”, the kingdom “will do what it takes to counter that threat, including taking military action inside Syria”.

Syrian opposition media said Mr Al Ramthan was killed along with seven relatives in his home in the village of Shaab, east of the city of Suweida.

The village is situated in a rugged basalt plain known as the black desert, the main part of a drugs smuggling corridor between Syria and Jordan.

A second air strike yesterday hit an abandoned drug facility in Syria’s southern Deraa province. It was linked to the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, according to Syrian opposition figures.

“Both Al Ramthan’s home and the facility were left in ruins,” Ryan Marouf, a Syrian researcher tracking the drug trade, told Reuters.