Lebanon’s army has arrested Nouh Zaiter, one of the country’s most notorious drug lords, a source confirmed to Al Arabiya English on Thursday.
In a post on X, the army said it had detained “one of the most dangerous wanted individuals” during an ambush on the Kneisseh–Baalbek road.
The army did not name the suspect but identified him by the initials N.Z.
Zaiter, born in 1977, allegedly ran a veritable empire in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border, producing and exporting drugs including the stimulant captagon.
In a 2016 interview with Lebanese TV outlet al-Jadeed, Zaitar admitted that he grew and sold cannabis but denied he led a drug mafia. He joked that if Lebanese politicians smoked marijuana, they could resolve the country’s political paralysis.
He has been on the run from Lebanese authorities for years, and has dozens of arrest warrants and criminal convictions to his name.
The United States, Britain and the European Union sanctioned him in 2023.
The US Treasury said at the time that he was “a known arms dealer and drug smuggler” who allegedly conducted his activities under the protection of the authorities of now-deposed Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad.
The US sanctioned him alongside two of al-Assad’s cousins over the trafficking of captagon.
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