Source : Perth Now news
Libyan authorities have seized a shipment of tens of thousands of ecstasy pills, each marked with the face of ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi and smuggled in from Europe, security officials say.
Images released by a security agency in Tripoli showed sacks of brown pellets moulded into the shape of Gaddafi’s head and shoulders, with the lines of his distinctive features and robes pressed into their surface.
Libya has become a major regional transit hub for synthetic drugs and other narcotics on their way to local users and other parts of North Africa and the wider continent, according to a United Nations report released in January.
Drug gangs were taking advantage of the tumultuous situation in the country since 2011, the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said.
That year, Gaddafi was toppled in a NATO-backed uprising, plunging Libya into a prolonged period of internal conflict and division.
Security agents received a tip-off a gang was planning to send the drugs by sea and tracked the shipment until it arrived, Al Rada for Combating Terrorism and Organized Crime, a security agency under the Tripoli-based Presidential Council, said in a statement.
Officers intercepted the shipment after it arrived and found the pills hidden in a cargo van, the statement said.
“The operation yielded a total of approximately 100,000 XTC (ecstasy) pills,” and a number of suspects were referred to prosecutors, it said.
The pills had come via a European country and arrived at a Libyan port, the agency said, without naming either.
Tripoli’s Presidential Council has acted as head of state since a UN-facilitated dialogue with the UN-recognised Government of National Unity in 2021.
Libya remains divided between the GNU in the west and authorities under military commander Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east and much of its south.
