Police arrested a 36-year-old man who was caught near the Dead Sea area allegedly carrying 13 kilograms of heroin and 40,000 ecstasy pills

Police arrested a 36-year-old man who was caught near the Dead Sea area allegedly carrying 13 kilograms of heroin and 40,000 ecstasy pills weighing a total of five kilograms. Officers from the Negev district, in concert with Border Police personnel in the area, noticed a suspicious figure loitering in a region long known as a gateway for drug smuggling. The contraband is estimated to be worth millions of shekels. The suspect, a Bedouin resident of the Negev, was taken into custody for questioning. Police will request the Be'er Sheva Magistrate extend his remand.
Earlier this year, police and IDF troops seized the largest shipment of pure heroin ever to be intercepted on the border with Lebanon, a total of 32.5 kilograms of pure heroin, worth some NIS 30 million.
Police Superintendent Ami Mualem, commander of the force' Lebanon border unit, told Haaretz that a joint police-IDF patrol in the Biranit area detected two men with large packs on their backs. Police arrested the two, and were shocked the find the large amount of heroin in the backpacks, Mualem said. "This was the largest quantity of heroin ever captured on the northern border," he added.