UAE police seized 196 kilos of hashish worth $400,000 this week as five Pakistanis tried to smuggle it into the country, a police official said Wednesday.
Maj. Abdulrahman Nasir Al Fardan, head of the police anti-narcotics section, said that the hashish was part of a larger consignment which a drug gang was trying to smuggle into the UAE, reported the Gulf News.
"Our personnel caught a gang member red-handed at Khor Fakkan seaport when he was leaving the boat on which the gang had smuggled the narcotics. He was carrying a quantity of hashish with him. He led the police to the other four gang members who were still aboard the boat," Fardan said.
Fardan said that a huge wooden box full of hashish was hidden in the boat's engine room. It was camouflaged as diesel oil. "Interrogation of the gang members led police to a remote area where another consignment of hashish was buried in the sand," Fardan said.
Police dogs also discovered a third stash of hashish nearby.
"One of the gang members was assigned to push drugs in the UAE and other countries in the region, and the other four were responsible only for smuggling the drugs into the country," Fardan said – Albawaba.com
Al Fardan denied that drug smuggling increased in the summer when most people travelled abroad on vacation. "Most of the cases reported in summer are related to drug addiction or to people who smuggle drugs into the counry for personal use," he said.
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