{"id":100615,"date":"2020-04-01T13:42:29","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T20:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=100615"},"modified":"2020-04-01T13:43:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T20:43:24","slug":"sri-lanka-seizes-record-us65-million-worth-of-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/04\/01\/sri-lanka-seizes-record-us65-million-worth-of-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka seizes record US$65 million worth of drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy channelnewsasia.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>COLOMBO: &nbsp;Sri Lanka&#8217;s navy seized US$65 million worth of crystal methamphetamine and ketamine on Wednesday (Apr 1) in the country&#8217;s biggest drugs bust, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Acting on a tip-off, authorities raided a flagless vessel in the country&#8217;s southern waters and arrested nine Pakistani men suspected of smuggling the drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Navy personnel, wearing special protective clothing in case the suspects had COVID-19, <strong>found 605 kilogrammes of crystal meth, also known as ice, and 579 kilogrammes of ketamine, <\/strong>said Navy Commander Piyal de Silva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;This is the first time we have found ketamine and it is likely that the smugglers were trying to take this cargo to some East Asian destination,&#8221; de Silva told reporters in the capital Colombo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka&#8217;s defence ministry said the drugs had an estimated street value in Colombo of about 12,500 million rupees (US$65 million), making it the country&#8217;s biggest single seizure of drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last month, the navy seized two foreign trawlers carrying more than US$33 million worth of heroin and ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Authorities said initial investigations suggested the Iran-Pakistan coast was the point of origin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy channelnewsasia.com COLOMBO: &nbsp;Sri Lanka&#8217;s navy seized US$65 million worth of crystal methamphetamine and ketamine on Wednesday (Apr 1) in the country&#8217;s biggest drugs bust, officials said. Acting on a tip-off, authorities raided a flagless vessel in the country&#8217;s southern waters and arrested nine Pakistani men suspected of smuggling the drugs. Navy personnel, wearing special [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}