Chinese and South African police on Monday announced the arrest of four Chinese men who tried to smuggle 2.5 million pills of the drug methaqualone worth 26 million U.S. dollars into South Africa.

The announcement of arrest of the four men surnamed Wu, Zeng, Pu and Xu comes a day before the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The men were charged with hiding the drugs in 203 wooden doors to be exported from Yiwu City, east China's Zhejiang Province, to South Africa in early 2006, local police and customs said on Monday.

The South African police seized the drugs from the doors, which were mixed in with 117 other doors, in Johannesburg in May last year.

A joint investigation between the law enforcement agencies of the two countries was launched and, acting on information provided by Chinese exporters of wooden doors to South Africa, Chinese police raided the hideouts of the suspects in Hunan, Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces in November last year and captured four people.

The four suspects have confessed that they had smuggled drugs to South Africa and Tanzania on many previous occasions - hiding drugs in inflatable mattresses, saws and powdered carbon �C between 2002 and 2005, according to Zhejiang police.

The men have been transferred to the procuratorate of Zhejiang's Jinhua City.

Methaqualone is a sedative which was used in the 1960s and 1970s to treat insomnia. It has also been used as a recreational drug, particularly in the 1970s in North America and in recent years in South Africa.

An overdose of methaqualone can lead to cardiac or respiratory arrest.

Source: Xinhua