MAJOR DRUG RING CRUSHED

Smugglers Channeled Pills From Canada Through Detroit

DETROIT -- Federal authorities arrested six Metro Detroit men on Thursday,
breaking up what they said is a ring that smuggled an ingredient for
methamphetamine from Canada to California.

The bust was part of a nationwide crackdown known as Operation Mountain
Express that included 96 arrests in a dozen cities, the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration said.

A grand jury in Detroit handed up an indictment in the case last month
charging the men with conspiring to smuggle pseudoephedrine from March 1999
to the present.

The drug, properly used as a cold tablet, is also used to make
methamphetamine, a stimulant more commonly known as speed.

"A little of this can go a long way," said Susan Feld, a spokeswoman for the
DEA in Detroit.

Eight bottles with 1,000 pills can make a pound of speed, she said.

Authorities seized 357 cases of pseudoephedrine in Minnesota from the ring
operated by the Metro Detroit men, Feld said. That shipment alone would have
made 1,300 pounds of speed and was worth about $14 million on the streets,
she said.

Haidar Auon, 38, of Dearborn Heights and Mohamad Kassir, 33, of Dearborn
were released on $10,000 bond. Mohamad Mahmoud Jafar, 45, of Dearborn
Heights is scheduled for a bond hearing today in U.S. District Court in
Detroit. The men were arrested in Detroit and Birmingham.

Another man, Assaad Hamdan, 38, of Dearborn was indicted but not yet
arrested.

Kamal Mohamad Nagi, Saleh Mohsen Elmathil and Norbert Kurzawa were also
arrested but have not been indicted.

The smugglers sold the pills to methamphetamine laboratories in California
and Mexico, said Joseph Keefe, head of DEA's special operations division.

Pseudoephedrine is legal to purchase in Canada, but it's a controlled
substance in the United States.

"There's a tremendous volume of pseudeophedrine coming in from Canada and a
number of Middle Eastern operators," Keefe said.

Some of the money from the smuggling operation has been traced back to
Jordan and other Middle Eastern nations. A spokeswoman for the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Detroit said there are no apparent ties to terrorism.

Operation Mountain Express so far has led to more than 160 arrests,
authorities said. Agents have seized $16 million in cash, 83 pounds of
methamphetamine and 10 metric tons of pseudoephedrine capable of producing
nine tons of methamphetamine worth an estimated $100 million.