Libyan security forces have seized around 100,000 ecstasy pills shaped in the likeness of former leader Muammar Gaddafi after intercepting a shipment smuggled by sea from Europe, officials said.
The pills were discovered inside a cargo van, according to a statement issued late Saturday by Al Rada for Combating Terrorism and Organized Crime, a security agency under the Tripoli-based Presidential Council.
Officers acted on a tip-off about a gang’s plans to transport the drugs by sea and monitored the shipment until it reached a Libyan port, the agency said.
Several suspects were referred to prosecutors. Authorities did not identify the European country through which the shipment travelled or the port where it arrived.
Images released by the agency showed sacks of brown pills moulded into the shape of Gaddafi’s head and shoulders, with his facial features and robes pressed into the surface.
Libya has become a major transit point for synthetic drugs and other narcotics destined for domestic consumers and markets across North Africa and the wider continent, according to a January report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The report said trafficking gangs had exploited the instability that followed Gaddafi’s overthrow in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Libya remains divided between the internationally recognised Government of National Unity in the west and eastern authorities aligned with military commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control the east and much of the south.
The Presidential Council has served as the country’s head of state since a UN-facilitated political process in 2021.
