The Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) is working to identify and arrest people in Ghana who helped a Syrian national caught at Beirut airport with cocaine he flew in from Accra.
The man was arrested on Saturday, October 31, at Rafic Hariri International Airport with about 40 kilograms of suspected cocaine in two pieces of luggage, NACOC said in a statement on Sunday.
Lebanese Customs put the haul at 46.7 kilograms in 40 packages, and called it the largest drug seizure in the airport’s history.
NACOC said the arrest “followed a controlled delivery operation” run with Lebanese drug law enforcement authorities.
In a controlled delivery, investigators let a shipment they have already detected travel under watch, so they can identify the people sending and receiving it.
The statement, signed by Francis Opoku Amoah, NACOC’s Acting Director of Public Affairs and International Relations, said the operation aimed to identify suspects at “both ends of the supply chain” and gather intelligence on the wider network.
It did not say whether anyone had been arrested in Ghana.
Last week, Ghana deported a South Korean man in his 80s accused of shipping more than five tonnes of cocaine off South America, after 22 years living in the country without legal status.
In Beirut, Customs identified the Syrian only by his initials, B.H. He arrived on Middle East Airlines flight MEA 576.
Customs said the cocaine was wrapped in packaging and insulation designed to defeat scanners, and that electronic tracking devices were found inside the packages.
Preliminary investigations showed he had entered Lebanon through the Masnaa crossing on the Syrian border several weeks earlier, then flew to Accra and returned with the drugs, Customs said.
Lebanese investigators are now trying to identify who was meant to receive the shipment.
