Iraq dismantles 25 drug trafficking networks in 2024
The Iraqi Interior Ministry’s narcotics control department revealed on Saturday that 25 international drug trafficking networks have been dismantled in Iraq since the beginning of 2024.
Ziyad Khalaf, an official of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, told the Iraqi News Agency (INA) that the drug trafficking networks had been dismantled in cooperation with neighboring countries, including Syria, Qatar, and Iran.
Khalaf confirmed that since the beginning of the year, 74 convicted drug dealers had received death sentences from Iraqi courts.
During his speech at the second version of the Baghdad International Conference on Countering Narcotics held earlier this month in Baghdad, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, warned that the trafficking and use of narcotics are seriously threatening regional stability.
Despite remarkable efforts implemented by the Iraqi government to prevent drug dealing, the number of drug addicts and traffickers in the country has been alarmingly rising in recent years.
In March, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior revealed that more than 1,400 suspects, including foreign traffickers, had been arrested in different parts of the country on drug-related offenses in February alone.
The Interior Ministry also illustrated that nine tons of psychoactive chemicals and almost 390 kilograms of narcotics were seized in the same month.
Iraqi security forces discovered a Captagon production factory in the southern Iraqi governorate of Muthanna for the first time in the country last July.
Drug trafficking has become a profitable business in Iraq, with experts estimating its total value at more than $10 billion.
