Uzbekistan’s State Security Service announced the arrest of an Afghan citizen at the Ayritom customs checkpoint on charges of drug trafficking. According to the agency, around 1.8 kilograms of opium and heroin were seized from his vehicle and residence in the city of Termez.<\/p>\n
According to a press release from the service’s office published on Saturday, November 14, the detainee, born in 1966, was traveling to the customs checkpoint in a Toyota vehicle. His name and identity have not been disclosed.<\/p>\n
The agency also reported that in a separate operation to identify an individual who was supposed to receive the drugs inside Uzbekistan, an Uzbek citizen residing in the Denau district of the Surkhandarya region was arrested. The State Security Service stated that criminal cases have been filed against both individuals and investigations are ongoing.<\/p>\n
According to the 2026 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan increased by 330 percent compared to the previous year, and opium production rose by 400 percent. The report listed the area of land under opium poppy cultivation as approximately 10,000 hectares in 2025 and over 43,000 hectares in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Afghan citizen was arrested for drug trafficking at Uzbekistan’s Ayritom checkpoint; 1.8 kg of opium and heroin were seized. Investigations continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-security-incidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}