According to a statement
from the court, the pills were seized by finance police and customs officials
in the container port of Gioia Tauro Italy’s biggest.
Italy seized more than 24
million tablets of a synthetic opiate that Islamic State militants planned to
sell to finance attacks around the world, the head of a southern Italian court
said on Friday.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration collaborated in the investigation.
A video shows police
opening a container filled with boxes of Tramadol, a powerful painkiller
normally available only on prescription.
The court said with an
average sale price of about two euros ($2.33) per tablet, the haul was worth
€50m.
Foreign investigators told
the court in the city of Reggio Calabria that the drugs belonged to Islamic
State.
“drug sales were managed
directly by Islamic State to finance the terrorist activities planned and
carried out around the world,” Reggio Calabria’s chief prosecutor, Federico
Cafiero De Raho, said.
“Part of the illegal profit
from their sale would have been used to finance extremist groups in Libya,
Syria and Iraq,” he added.
The seizure comes three
days after an Uzbek immigrant, Sayfullo Saipov, drove a truck on a New York
City bike path, killing eight, in the latest attack claimed by Islamic State.
No details on how the
illegal shipment was discovered or on its final destination were provided by
the court.
A similar shipment was
discovered in Greece in 2016, and an even larger one was found in Italy’s Genoa
port in May.
(Reuters/NAN)
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