French customs authorities arrested a traveler coming from Israel at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, after finding in his possession a huge shipment of the narcotic plant khat, weighing 144 kilograms, in one of the remarkable seizures recorded by French airports linked to the smuggling of this prohibited substance.
The Public Prosecution in Bobigny told Agence France-Presse that the traveler, born in 1998, holds Swiss citizenship and resides in Jerusalem, and had arrived in France on a flight coming from Tel Aviv.
The shipment was discovered during the night from Sunday to Monday, and French customs placed the traveler in customs detention, in preparation for referring him to the judiciary, and he will appear before the court on Tuesday.
In France, khat is classified as a prohibited narcotic substance, due to the fact that its leaves contain stimulant compounds with effects similar to amphetamine, which makes its possession, transport, and trade subject to drug-related laws.
Qat consumption is particularly widespread in Yemen and a number of countries in the Horn of Africa, where its fresh leaves are picked and chewed for long periods, while they are stored inside the mouth to benefit from their stimulant effect.
The new seizure comes at a time when French customs figures show a noticeable decline in the quantities of Qat confiscated in recent years. The quantities seized in France amounted to about 3.5 tons during the year 2025, compared to more than 5 tons in 2024, and about 7 tons in 2023, after reaching nearly 16 tons in 2022.
At the same time, these figures reveal the fundamental role played by air traffic in smuggling qat into France, as about 72% of the total quantities seized during the past year arrived via air shipments, which places airports at the heart of the control and control operations carried out by the French authorities.
At the European level, the largest recorded seizure of qat dates back to the year 2022 in Spain, where the authorities confiscated a shipment weighing 3.2 tons, and its value was estimated at about 61 million euros, indicative of the size of the smuggling networks targeting the European market despite the ban imposed on the substance in a number of countries on the continent.
