State prosecutors on Monday filed an indictment against three Arab Israelis, after they were arrested by security forces on suspicion of smuggling drugs into the Gaza Strip via drone.

Police officers, Shin Bet agents and IDF soldiers arrested the three Negev residents — Muhammad Sarahin, Sharif Abu-Gardud, and Younes Abu-Gardud — in April.

They were accused of carrying out multiple drug and cigarette smuggling operations from Israel to Gaza, leaving the drones in the enclave.

Police said the smuggling posed a “direct threat to national security” given the worry that the drones, which can carry loads of dozens of kilograms, could fall into the hands of Hamas.

Officers requested to extend their detention until the end of legal proceedings.

The three defendants “were involved in exporting dangerous drugs by drone to the Gaza Strip during wartime, while fully aware that the entity controlling Gaza is the Hamas terror group, which would be able to use the drones that the defendants brought to Gaza for terrorist activities,” state prosecutor Assaf Bar Yosef said.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that cigarettes were regularly smuggled into war-torn Gaza via humanitarian aid trucks, having been placed there by UN and Israeli accomplices. Once past inspection and inside Gaza, the aid trucks were targeted by both smugglers retrieving their goods and other criminals hoping to get to them first, drawn by the contraband’s sky-high prices.

Following the outbreak of the war with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack— when some 5,000 terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages— Israel limited imports into Gaza to essential goods, a category that does not include cigarettes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the resumption of “basic” aid to the Strip on Monday, after a two-month ban following the collapse of a ceasefire-hostage release deal.

Meanwhile, a 28-year-old man was remanded in custody in Denmark on Monday on suspicion of purchasing drones to be used in a Hamas “terrorist attack,” Danish intelligence said.

Flemming Drejer, head of operations at Denmark’s PET intelligence service, said in a statement that the service believed that “this individual purchased drones intended for use by Hamas in a terrorist attack at an unknown location in Denmark or abroad.”

Appearing before a court on Monday, the man was remanded in custody until June 11.

PET said the case has links to both Hamas and criminal gangs in Denmark, and is related to a number of arrests made in December 2023 as part of an operation to prevent a suspected planned “terrorist attack.”

Six people were ordered detained at the time, four in absentia, among them the 28-year-old man, who Danish media reports said was a prominent figure in organized crime in Copenhagen. According to public broadcaster DR, the suspect had been extradited from Lebanon over a separate double murder case.

Terror groups have intensified efforts since October 2023 to carry out attacks on Jewish and Israeli sites in Europe.