More than five kilos of heroin and over 1.5 million keptagon tablets have been seized in the Kingdom in February and March, a spokesman for the General Directorate for Drug Combat told the Arabic daily, Al-Jazeera. A number of arrests were also made. On March 12, according to Major Ibrahim Abu Hlaiyel, 3,923 grams of pure heroin were confiscated in Riyadh and an unspecified number of arrests were made. Three days earlier, on March 9, police confiscated 733,000 keptagon tablets and 3.2 kilos of heroin and arrested a number of suspects connected to the drugs. On March 13 in Riyadh, another 550 grams of pure heroin were confiscated. In Tabuk's Haqil province, drug combat teams seized 400,000 keptagon tablets on Mar. 4 and 5. In February, police there confiscated another 23,000 keptagon tablets. In late February, anti-drug teams operating in Makkah seized 26,982 tablets of keptagon that were in the possession of what police described as one of the “most dangerous drug-peddling gangs” in the city. At the Jizan checkpoints of Al-Darb and Al-Hamra, a total of 79 kilos of hashish were seized on Feb. 25 and 26. Those awaiting the shipments were arrested in Jeddah. Another 74 kilos of hashish were sized in Samtah in the Jizan province on Feb. 26. In Jeddah, 40 kilos of hashish were seized on Mar. 10 while 144 bottles of alcohol were confiscated. Arrests were made in both cases. __
