On 3 August, seventeen people including several Misrata Sea Port employees, were arrested on drug trafficking charges on orders from the Attorney General Sadiq al-Sour, following a longstanding surveillance operation. Arrest warrants were also issued for a further thirty people. In total, three million tablets of Pregabalin were seized. The Attorney General’s investigation revealed that this shipment of Pregabalin was the latest in a series that were usually smuggled from Misrata to Zliten, where a larger drug stash was stored, and then further afield to Zawiyya, Al-Ajilat and Zintan to be sold or smuggled outside Libya. The Attorney General asserted that the perpetrators had previously used fabricated official documents ‘falsely stating that the approval of the competent authorities had been given’ so as to import the drugs ‘seemingly legally’ through the seaports. Those arrested promptly ‘confessed’ to their involvement in drug trafficking. The Attorney General also requested the extradition of suspects involved in the drug trafficking from other countries, without specifying their nationalities.
