The dramatic collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.
Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the hidden market across the Middle East.
Led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, the rebels say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.
HTS fighters allowed AFP journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.
A black-masked fighter, Abu Malek al-Shami, A black-masked fighter Abu Malek al-Shami claimed the factory was linked to Maher al-Assad and Amer Khiti.
Maher al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s brother, was a military commander and is now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
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