PARIS: The seizure of a large amount of performance-enhancing drugs in a raid by Yemeni law enforcement agents is “a landmark moment,” the head of investigations for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has told AFP.
Gunter Younger said the operation, which netted 447kg of both narcotics and performance-enhancing substances, mainly amphetamines, showed authorities were increasingly tracking the cross-border trade of prohibited substances.
The raid — one of several carried out including at sea — sends “a clear signal to criminal networks that the landscape is shifting, that trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs is now on the radar of the authorities,” Younger said.
WADA and the Yemeni authorities believe Syrian and Iranian drugmakers have switched their operations to Yemen since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December last year.
They believe the drugmakers are exploiting the war and economic crisis in Yemen and claim the drugs provide a source of income for the Iranian-backed Houthi group in the country.
Major Murad Al-Radwany, Interpol’s Yemen-based internal security coordinator, expressed satisfaction his colleagues had helped to dismantle “the first factory to be set up in Yemen and equipped with the latest modern devices.”
“It was controlled and dismantled before it began operations and exporting drugs and stimulants abroad, and the experts were arrested,” he told AFP.
“At the same time, they were preparing to open a new factory in other cities” to “export drugs and stimulants to neighboring countries,” he said.