The New York Post
By Lorenzo Tondo
PALERMO, Italy — One of the world’s most wanted hashish smugglers has been captured in Casablanca, Morocco, the Italian police said on Thursday, the highest-profile arrest yet in a three-year anti-trafficking operation that has spanned three continents.
Ben Ziane Berhili, 57, the owner of a large dessert company in Morocco, made the bulk of his income by smuggling 400 tons of hashish to Europe every year, according to Italian investigators.
His arrest is the latest in a multinational investigation into a lucrative new drug trafficking route to Europe that begins in Morocco and passes along the coast of North Africa to Libya, where it includes an area contested by several armed groups, including the Islamic State.
The Italian operation, which has expanded to include other European countries and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, has led to the seizure of 20 shipments — more than 280 tons — of hashish, worth about $3.2 billion, since 2013.
The New York Times wrote about this new trafficking route and the possible involvement of the Islamic State in September. Here is an excerpt:
Investigators say they believe that at least in some cases, the terrorist group would have been able to exact a tax in return for the drugs’ passage. That matches the Islamic State’s business practice in its stronghold in Syria and Iraq, where according to one study by IHS Country Risk, 7 percent of the group’s revenue last year was from the production, taxation and trafficking of drugs.
But officials concede that they cannot be certain what role, if any, the Islamic State might play in the hashish shipments.
“No one has eyes on the ground to say that they know for a fact,” said Masood Karimipour, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s regional representative for the Middle East and North Africa. “What we can offer, or make a reasonable inferences from, is that where the terrorists are holding terrain they are controlling everything that goes through it, including the trafficking of whatever — whether it’s weapons or drugs.”
