DOUMA: The large-scale drug lab was located on the western outskirts of Damascus, which was the capital of the Assad family and which denied for a long time any connection to the drug trade. It was situated only up a hill from a major road.
Washington and others accused President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government of making money off the manufacture and distribution of captagon, an addictive amphetamine-like stimulant that spread throughout the Middle East from construction sites to high-end parties and the front lines of war.
Experts estimate that the annual captagon trade is worth billions of dollars, and Western countries have connected the illegal trade in Syria to Maher al-Assad, Assad’s brother, and the Syrian army’s Fourth Division.
