ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Maysan criminal court on Monday sentenced two drug dealers to life in prison, reported the Iraqi supreme judicial council, after the seizure of nearly 20 kilograms of narcotics in their possession.
Security forces arrested one of the suspects who was in possession of 15 kilograms of narcotics while transporting the substances in Maysan’s Qalaat Sukkar district. The other suspect was arrested on his way towards Baghdad, with four kilograms of narcotics caught in his possession.
According to Article 27 of the Iraqi Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Law, any suspect charged with exporting, importing, producing, or planting narcotic substances shall be sentenced to either death or life imprisonment.
The rate of drug addicts and dealers has been on an alarming rise in Iraq in recent years, despite strict measures taken by the Iraqi government to curb the phenomenon.
Iraq’s National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji last week warned against the increasing rate of drug abuse in the country, claiming that the drug phenomenon is “important and dangerous”.
More than 20,000 drug users have been arrested in the past two and a half years, revealed Iraq’s Narcotics Control directorate in June, also seizing over 500,000 kilograms of psychotropic substances in that same time period.
Iraqi security forces in late April said they had broken up a drug trafficking ring and seized over six million pills of the amphetamine-type stimulant captagon.
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