CAIRO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Libyan authorities have seized a shipment of tens of thousands of ecstasy pills, each marked with the face of ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi and smuggled in from Europe, security officials said.
Images released by a security agency in Tripoli showed sacks of brown pellets that were moulded into the shape of Gaddafi's head and shoulders, with the lines of his distinctive features and robes pressed into their surface.
Libya has become a major regional transit hub for synthetic drugs and other narcotics on their way to local users and other parts of North Africa and the wider continent, according to a U.N. report released in January.
Drug gangs were taking advantage of the tumultuous situation in the country since 2011, said the report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. That year, Gaddafi was toppled in a NATO-backed uprising, plunging Libya into a prolonged period of internal conflict and division.
Security agents got a tip-off that a gang was planning to send the drugs by sea and tracked the shipment until it arrived, read the statement issued late on Saturday from Al Rada for Combating Terrorism and Organized Crime,a security agency under the Tripoli-based Presidential Council.
Officers intercepted the shipment after it arrived and found the pills hidden in a cargo van, the statement added.
"The operation yielded a total of approximately 100,000 'XTC' (Ecstasy) pills," and a number of suspects were referred to prosecutors, it said. The pills had come via a European country and arrived at a Libyan port, the agency added, without naming either.
Tripoli's Presidential Council has acted as head of state since a U.N.-facilitated dialogue with the U.N.-recognised Government of National Unity in 2021.
Libya remains divided between the GNU in the west and authorities under military commander Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east and much of its south.
(Reporting by Hani Amara; Editing by Alexander Dizadosz and Andrew Heavens)
