TEHRAN (Tasnim) A cargo of more than a ton of illicit drugs was seized by anti-narcotic police forces in Irans northeastern province of Khorassan Razavi, a provincial police chief announced on Monday.The intelligence teams of the provincial police infiltrated into some drug rings and found clues about the transfer of a heavy cargo of illicit drugs from Afghanistan, Khorassan Razavi Police Chief General Bahman Amiri Moqaddam said.
After tracking down the cargo on a trailer, the law enforcement forces seized 1004kg of opium from the trailer when it stopped in a cargo terminal in Mashhad and arrested the driver.
In recent decades Iran has been hit by drug trafficking, mainly because of its 936- kilometer shared border with Afghanistan, where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says accounts for 90% of the worlds opium.
The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking makes up 15 percent of Afghanistans gross domestic product, a figure that is likely to rise as international military and development spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Iran is netting eight times more opium and three times more heroin than all other countries in the world combined.
By Tasnim News Agency
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