RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazilian police on Wednesday arrested 51 members of two narcotics gangs on charges of drug trafficking in that South American nation and other countries, officials said.

The arrests were made in two simultaneous operations in eight Brazilian states involving 300 Federal Police officers and another 200 with the police force of Rio de Janeiro state, where 28 of the detainees were taken into custody, media reports said.

Most of those arrested were members of the middle class who communicated among themselves by Internet to elude potential wiretaps by Justice Ministry officials.

Police seized ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, hashish and an inhalant drug made in Brazil that is a combination of chloroform, ether and fragrance.

The Federal Police also said five weapons were seized, including assault rifles, machine guns and handguns.

According to official figures, all of the detainees are between the ages of 20 and 30 and were arrested in the states of Santa Catarina, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Bahia, Minas Gerais, Parana, Pernambuco and the Federal District (Brasilia).

Prosecutors said the gangs hired people to transport cocaine to Europe, mainly the Netherlands, and that the smugglers returned with synthetic drugs to be sold in the Brazilian market.

Those trips earned the traffickers as much as a million reais (some $438,500) per month, according to police estimates.

"The suspects are all young, middle-class, residents of upscale neighborhoods who abandoned their studies and never were legally employed either in the formal or informal economy," a spokesperson for the Attorney General's Office said.

Among the detainees is Henrique Dorneles Forni, who is known as Greg and considered one of the biggest drug dealers on Rio de Janeiro's relatively affluent south side. EFE