Cigarette smuggler skirts deadly edge of IS smoking ban
It was a heart-racing moment. The cigarette smuggler was stuck in line at a checkpoint as, up ahead, Islamic State militants were searching cars. He was running a big risk: The militants have banned smoking and lighting up is punishable with a fine or broken finger. Selling cigarettes can be a death sentence. Falah Abdullah […]Vivian Salama and Bram Janssen report for AP:
It was a heart-racing moment. The cigarette smuggler was stuck in line at a checkpoint as, up ahead, Islamic State militants were searching cars. He was running a big risk: The militants have banned smoking and lighting up is punishable with a fine or broken finger. Selling cigarettes can be a death sentence.
Falah Abdullah Jamil, 30, relied on his quick wits and silver tongue. When the fighters came to his vehicle at the checkpoint leading to his home village of Eski Mosul in northern Iraq, they asked what he had in his trunk. "Nothing," he lied. They popped open the trunk and found the 125 cartons of cigarettes he'd brought from Rabia, a town near the border with Syria.
