ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi authorities seized 90 kilograms of narcotics in the country's territorial waters after receiving an “initial intelligence lead” from a “neighboring country,” Baghdad's interior ministry said in a Wednesday statement, as the Iraqi judiciary announced a death sentence for a drug trafficker.
After a “full day of precise tracking,” the lead “developed into a complete intelligence picture that led to identifying the suspects' boat, tracking its course and intercepting it,” the ministry's General Directorate of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Affairs said.
The “special operation at sea,” carried out with the Iraqi navy and military intelligence, led to the arrest of three “foreign suspects,” while “intelligence and field efforts” continued to track down “the fourth suspect, who fled,” the Directorate added.
Earlier in the day, the criminal court in southern Iraq’s Najaf province handed down a death sentence to a drug trafficker.
“The convicted individual was found in possession of methamphetamine and opium with the intent to traffic and sell them to users,” the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement.
In late August, the Iraqi interior ministry said it had secured 69 death sentences and 267 life terms out of a total of 4,644 convictions. It also cited the dismantling of 304 domestic and 54 international trafficking networks in 21 operations carried out abroad, as well as the issuing of 43 international arrest warrants and the establishment of six contact points.
A July 2024 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) identified Iraq as a “conduit” in a drug-trafficking network linking Southwest Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe.
Alexander Soderholm, a policy advisor at the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), told Rudaw in September that Iraq has also served as an important trafficking route for heroin and methamphetamine from Afghanistan and Iran, primarily toward Turkey.
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