A security team from Libya’s Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Control Agency, arrested two members of an African gang selling cocaine in Tripoli.
In a statement, the Ministry of the Interior confirmed it organised two ambushes to arrest the leaders red-handed in buying and selling the drugs.
Legal measures were taken against the two men, and they were referred to the Drug Crime Prosecution.
In September, the Libyan Customs Authority said that it had thwarted the smuggling of huge quantities of narcotic tablets concealed inside a car on the Libyan-Tunisian border at the Wadi El Bir region.
“After an investigation, officers were able to seize 270,000 narcotic tablets,” the Customs Department said in a statement. They also found five bags of Heroin, weighing 2.5 kilograms.
The operation was reportedly led by Algerian smugglers. This was part of the efforts exerted by the Customs Authority to impose security and the rule of law, along the Libyan-Tunisian border.
In May, the Head of Libya’s INTERPOL National Central Bureau, Adel Bentaleb claimed that there has been a marked increase in drug traffickers using Libya as a transhipment point. This includes drugs from as far as South America.
“While many of these drugs are neither produced nor consumed here, this has not spared us from the violent crime inevitably wrought by such activity, which we are determined to combat alongside INTERPOL,” Bentaleb said.
INTERPOL has said drugs worth nearly €100 million euros have been seized in Africa and the Middle East, during a large international police operation in March and April of 2021.
Last Monday, the Tunisian Ministry of Defence said that military units at the southern borders arrested smugglers crossing the southeastern border with Libya.
The statement added that the vehicle was carrying two people, and was loaded with approximately 450,000 narcotic tablets intended for neurological diseases, and a quantity of cigarettes.