Two Nigerians have been arrested in Beirut, Lebanon, for allegedly smuggling 156 cocaine capsules weighing about three kilograms and worth more than $500,000.
Reports gathered on Thursday indicate the suspects allegedly swallowed the drugs before being apprehended in a hotel in Kesrouan, north of Beirut. Lebanese outlet L’Orient Today reported that the arrests were carried out by the Central Bureau for Drug Control after an investigation into “an international organisation recruiting people to deliver cocaine to Lebanon,” with the route reportedly running “from Nigeria to Lebanon, transiting through Ethiopia.”
The country’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) said the two Nigerians, identified only as R. A. (born 1996) and L. N. (born 1977), landed at Beirut’s international airport at dawn on July 24, 2025. “They had swallowed cocaine capsules and went directly to a hotel in Kesrouan to extract the capsules and hand them over to a local dealer,” the ISF stated.
Investigators who had been tracking the duo arrested them “in the act” and seized “156 capsules of pure cocaine,” valued at “more than half a million U.S. dollars.”
The bust followed an earlier arrest on May 22, when a man trying to smuggle drugs into Beirut from an African country was caught at the airport with narcotics concealed in his suitcases and ingested in capsule form.
Reports indicate that arrests of Nigerians abroad for crimes such as drug trafficking, scams, and sexual offences have been increasing. Just last month, the Ghana Immigration Service confirmed the arrest of about 50 Nigerians in Accra for alleged cyberfraud and human trafficking during a raid in McCarthy Hills, Ga South Municipality. The landlord of the property was also taken into custody.
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