SHARJAH // Police have seized more than 48 tonnes of tramadol during a raid on a newly berthed ship in Sharjah Creek.
Two Indian sailors and six Iranians were arrested on Monday shortly after the ship Tawfiq arrived from an undisclosed location.
The drugs – nearly four and a half million tablets – were being delivered to a Dubai-based company. Two Iranian businessmen from the company were arrested separately, one of them shortly after he flew into Dubai Airport.
Brigadier Abdullah Mubarak Al Dukhan, the deputy director general of Sharjah Police, said he believed the men were planning to set up an illegal tramadol manufacturing plant in the UAE.
Col Ali Salem Al Khayal, the director of the anti-drugs department, said another drug had been discovered on the ship. “We have forwarded it to the laboratory to identify it,” he said.
He said the operation was the largest seizure of the drug in the region this year and praised the officers of Sharjah Police for their record in dealing with such large drugs cases.
In 1992 police seized three tonnes of hashish and four million captagon pills in separate raids and in 2008 they seized 202kg of heroin.
ykakande@thenational.ae