Lebanon's most wanted drug trafficker Nouh Zaiter was arrested Thursday after years on the run, authorities said.
Zaiter was taken into custody during a raid near the eastern city of Baalbek, according to a high-ranking military official. Zaiter eventually turned himself in to military intelligence after a standoff. The official spoke on condition on anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to speak to the media.
The Lebanese army didn't disclose Zaiter’s name, but referred to the captive by his initials.
Attorney Ashraf al-Moussawi told The New Arab's sister, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that there are nearly one thousand pending judicial cases against Zaiter.
He revealed that Zaiter was arrested in a very precise security operation carried out by Military Intelligence in the Beqaa region, where the Baalbek district is located, claiming that the captive did not resist, and was transferred to the Ministry of Defence.
Al-Moussawi noted that most of the in-absentia rulings issued against Zaiter are related solely to drug-related crimes, not car theft or kidnapping.
Regarding the timing of the arrest, he said it is linked to the wide-scale raids that army has been conducting in the Beqaa and other Lebanese areas.
Lebanon's army has been cracking down on the country's illicit drugs network, which often transported narcotics through its porous borders with Syria into Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
The wealthy monarchies have accused the Hezbollah of playing a major role in the trade of the highly addictive amphetamine known as Captagon, which the militant group denies.
The military has frequently raided factories largely located in eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border in a bid to improve ties with Riyadh, which suspended imports from the cash-strapped country in 2021 after finding Captagon hidden in shipments coming into the kingdom.
Zaiter was sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom in 2023 for his alleged involvement in the manufacturing and smuggling of Captagon alongside relatives and close associates of the Assad dynasty in Syria.
For years, Zaiter has been on the run from Lebanese authorities.
Prior to the conflict in Syria in 2011, he was known for producing and smuggling large amounts of cannabis and made occasional media appearances. Zaiter is close with Hezbollah and Syria’s Fourth Division under the now-ousted Assad regime.
Under Syria's new rulers, the government has been destroying the remnants of Captagon factories in the country that flourished during the conflict. Security officials there say they continue to bust smuggling attempts along the border with Lebanon.
Lebanon and Syria have slowly been trying to improve ties following Assad's downfall in a lightning insurgency in December 2024, and hope to resolve matters along the porous border.