Abu Dhabi: When police raided a man’s villa in Al Ain as part of a major drug bust, the suspect believed he could evade capture by hiding in his next-door neighbour’s water tank.
He was mistaken.
Ministry of Interior officials said on Sunday that police arrested the man after an extensive search of the immediate vicinity of his home.
More than 790,000 pills of narcotics were seized from three traders in Al Ain and Ajman during operation ‘Spirit of Cooperation’, the Ministry of Interior said.
Colonel Dr. Rashid Mohammad Borshid, head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), revealed that the first two offenders, both GCC nationals were caught in Al Ain while the third, an Arab, was apprehended in Ajman after being monitored closely as he made his way from Dubai.
Colonel Sultan Suwaieh Al Darmaki, Chief of the Anti-Drug Section at the CID, said that authorities received intelligence on gang activities that included possessing and smuggling large amounts of illegal substances. This prompted teams from local and federal authorities to work in tandem to apprehend those involved.
Using surveillance over large areas, a drug trade was uncovered between three main suspects: GCC national K.S.A., 38, his countryman A.T.A, 31, and A.K.S, 31, the Arab. The trio are accused of drug trafficking within the UAE and abroad.
The first two suspects were caught red-handed with 537 bags of narcotic pills and the third was arrested in Ajman with 160 sealed bags of the substance placed in the trunk of his vehicle.
The suspects confessed to their crimes upon being interrogated and confronted with the evidence, revealing that they aimed to sell a portion of the drugs locally and smuggle the remainder to neighbouring countries. The trio said that the leader of the gang, who resides in a nearby GCC country, had informed them of a stash of drugs in the UAE which they were responsible for promoting and selling locally besides smuggling a part of it to the nearby country in exchange for cash.
The first suspect was found in his neighbour’s water tank after attempting to flee when his residential villa in Al Ain was raided. He managed to climb the fence of his home to the roof of the home next-door. The second suspect was also arrested in the same location while dividing the pills and refilling them in different bags before attempting to smuggle them in the gas tank of a vehicle to a nearby country.
The third suspect was arrested from his Ajman home with the remainder of the pills being found in his rented vehicle.
Col. Dr. Borshid commended federal and local authorities and experts who worked as one team to track down the suspects and seize the illegal substances.
Colonel Saeed Abdullah Al Suwaidi, Director General, Anti-Narcotics Federal Directorate General at the Ministry of Interior, said that the Ministry had successfully busted the gang’s smuggling activities through a secret informant who helped authorities determine the initial location of the gang’s meeting in Dubai’s Al Quoz area.
Col. Al Suwaidi said that plans for the police bust were carried out in three different emirates as drug smuggling and trading is no longer limited to a single geographic area but involves different local and federal authorities given the serious nature of the crime and its effect on society.
