Man,70, living on charity in biggest drug smuggling bid
Police dog sniffs out drugs in container
In a shocking case, an elderly man surviving on a Dh2,000 monthly aid from a charity was named by police as the mastermind behind an attempt to smuggle 5.7 tonnes of captagon pills worth Dh1.8 billion.
The 70-year-old Arab suspect tried to smuggle 35.3 million pills of the illegal painkillers into Dubai was posing as poor person, the police said.
Major General Abdullah
Khalifa Al Merri, Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police, said: “He was receiving Dh2,000 per month from a charity institute in Sharjah and posing as a poor person. He coordinated with two drivers and another person to smuggle the drugs inside reels of electric cables.”
“The drugs was hidden inside containers coming through Jebel Ali Port. A K9 German Shepherd dog that has been in the force for seven years, identified the drug reels and helped foil the smuggling attempt,” Maj Gen Al Merri added.
An elderly man receiving Dh2,000 aid from a charity institute turned out to be the mastermind behind the world’s biggest attempt to smuggle 5.7 tonnes of Captagon pills, worth Dh1.8 billion, to the UAE, a senior Dubai Police official said yesterday.
Major General Abdullah Khalifa Al Merri, Dubai Police chief, said the 70-year-old Arab man who tried to smuggle 35.3 million pills of the illegal painkillers to Dubai was posing as poor person.
“He was receiving Dh2,000 a month from a charity institute in Sharjah. He coordinated with two drivers and another person to smuggle the drugs inside reels of electric cables,” Maj Gen Al Merri said.
The Arab man was a partner with his brother who was staying in an Eurasian country.
“The drugs was hidden inside containers coming through Jebel Ali Port. A K9 dog that has been in the force for seven years, identified the drug reels and helped foil the smuggling attempt,” Maj Gen Al Merri added.
The dog, Pule2, sniffed 200 containers coming in from Syria to help identify the drugs.
“It was a challenge to search the suspicious containers for 10 days before identifying them and monitoring the gang while extracting the containers from the port and keeping them in Sharjah. Drugs were hidden in eight reels of electric cables.”
Major-General Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, assistant chief for criminal investigation affairs, said the elderly man was checking the place where the the reels were stored for 15 days until Dubai Police arrested
him and three others on January 28, 2020.
“Each reel had 500 metres of cables. It took us four days
to open the reels and seize the drugs worth Dh1.8 billion in the market. It was a sophisticated operation due to the high level of cooperation between different departments,” Maj Gen al Mansouri said.
Brigadier Eid Mohammad Thani Hareb, director of AntiNarcotic Department at Dubai Police, said: “We didn’t have the number of the cargo or date of arrival. It was a huge challenge
but we searched 200 containers until the K9 team identified the suspicious containers.”
The biggest operation in the past was in Greece when authorities foiled a bid to smuggle 5.2 tonnes of Captagon.
“Dubai Police will always strike with an iron fist when it comes to drug dealers and gangs who want to disrupt the security and safety of the UAE,” Maj Gen Al Merri said.