Abd al-Muhsen bin Walid bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, a Saudi Arabian Prince, was detained on Monday over charges carrying drugs on his private plane.
Reuter, in its report, said that the Saudi Prince was caught in Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport by Lebanese security forces, who retrieved 40 boxes of drugs equivalent to 2 tons of narcotics from the prince's private aircraft.
This was the largest smuggling operation that the Lebanese forces have thwarted so far, AFP confirms in its report.
According to the report, the drugs that the prince and his men tried to smuggle was an amphetamine called captagon. It was a brand name for a pharmaceutical drug developed in the 1960's but in the 1980's, the production of the drug was terminated. Captagon is a brand name for amphetamine phenethylline, a synthetic stimulant. Terror groups like ISIS and al Nusra Front are reportedly smuggling chemical ingredients for the production of Captagon.
In a statement published in its website, U.N. said that Captagon trade is prevalent in Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. "The nature of the psychoactive ingredients in such tablets is not always clear, but reports suggest that amphetamine trafficked from South-East Europe is the main ingredient in Captagon tablets found in the consumer markets of the Middle East (notably Saudi Arabia), frequently alongside caffeine."
Meanwhile, Salon commented that this operation was "insidious" because while the aristocrats are exploiting drugs in massive amounts, the Saudi monarchy is executing people over drugs several times in a month. In fact, just hours before the Saudi prince was detained, a Pakistani drug smuggler was executed by the Saud government.
Salon's report added that according to Amnesty International, approximately 47 percent of people executed in Saudi Arabia have committed drug-related offenses. In a year, from August 2014 to August 2015, Saudi Arabia has executed 175 people. Meaning, its government executes one drug offender every two days.
