Dubai police said on Monday they had seized 24 kilos (around 53 pounds) of heroin with a street value of 1.6 million dollars and broken up a drug network led by three Asians.
The official WAM news agency quoted Colonel Khalil al-Mansuri as saying that the Asians smuggled the drugs in a cargo of citrus fruit from Pakistan into Dubai where a second group run by Africans took it out of the emirate.
Dubai, one of the seven member states in the United Arab Emirates, is a popular tourist destination and imposes tough penalties for all drug-related offences. Four years is the usual sentence for possession while trafficking in narcotics carries the death penalty.