Five Saudis have been arrested in Riyadh for drug trafficking and promoting the use of narcotics on social media, the security spokesman of the Ministry of Interior announced on Wednesday. Security agencies raided a rest house in the capital and arrested the five culprits with 788 amphetamine tablets, 229 contraband tablets, 12 grams of hashish, two pistols and 66 bullets. Earlier this month, the Directorate General of Narcotics Control announced the arrest of nine people for drug dealing through social media. They were running seven Twitter and Snapchat accounts using female identities to lure in young men. The directorate tracked down the accounts and identified the users as Saudi men in their 30s living in different regions of the Kingdom. The directorate also arrested a young man who defamed the National Anti-Corruption Committee Nazaha through Twitter. Last month Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman of the ministry of interior, announced that during the first four months of this Hijri year, 953 people involved in smuggling, transporting, receiving and trafficking drugs and psychotropics were arrested. Of these, 258 were Saudis and 695 were of other nationalities. While carrying out their tasks, security men faced armed resistance in several security operations which resulted in the martyrdom of one security man and the injury of 28 others. Five drug smugglers and dealers were killed and 13 others were injured. The security operations resulted in the seizure of 26.5 million amphetamine tablets, 16.1 tons of hashish and 6.3 kg of crude heroin.
