A qat smuggler was killed when his vehicle rolled over down a huge sand dune as he was trying to avoid arrest in the border area between Saudi Arabia and Yemen Tuesday. When the smuggler saw a police car from a distance monitoring him, he increased the speed of his 4WD to the maximum as it started to drive through the sand dune. As he kept driving up through the steep dune with a man inside, he lost control of the vehicle causing it to roll over and end up on its roof. The man inside the car with the smuggler was seriously injured. The police reported to the scene immediately and transferred the injured to Samtah Hospital, and the killed driver was taken to the morgue. Jizan police spokesman Col. Ahmad Al-Wadei said 130 bundles of qat were found in the car, and seized. Qat is strictly prohibited in Saudi Arabia with punishment that may go up to 25 years in jail for smuggling qat. In a recent interview, Prince Mohammad Bin Nasser Bin Abdul Aziz, Emir of Jizan, said that at least three million qat trees will be destroyed in the Jizan region bordering Yemen as soon as the proposal has been approved by the Council of Ministers. (Abdullah Mash'hour contributed to the story). – Okaz __
