Officers of the Directorate of Narcotics Control of Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry sort through tablets of captagon. (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Middle Eastern terror groups are reportedly expanding a multi-billion-pound drug trafficking network, raising fears that Europe could be flooded with a “highly addictive” narcotic known as “Jihadi speed.” Captagon, the amphetamine-like drug mass-produced by the ousted former Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad, is feared to reach UK streets within months.
Deadly addictive tablets, priced around £10 each, have been discovered in their millions being smuggled out of Syria, through Turkey and other locations, reaching as far as the Netherlands. Iran-backed networks such as Hezbollah, along with Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliates, are involved in the smuggling frenzy, selling the drugs to bolster their vast war coffers.
Trade in Captagon has reportedly expanded beyond the Middle East and into Europe so significantly that, since Bashar al-Assad was overthrown last year, 1.1 tons of the drug have been smuggled to the continent. Staggering quantities of the drug have been found, with one report seen by the Mirror suggesting millions of pills were discovered in Douma, outside Damascus.
A seizure of 60,000 pills at Riyadh airport highlighted the established smuggling network catering to the middle-class drug market across the Gulf States. However, the illegal amphetamine-type narcotic is not only popular among jihadi fighters, who use it to stay awake and highly focused for days without sleep, but also among Arab elites.
Captagon, the speed-amphetamine drug made and sold by ex-dictator Bashar al Assad. (Image: Daily Mirror)
The Daily Mirror has discovered fresh concerns regarding Captagon through a recently published intelligence document, which cautions that the Captagon trafficking operation is bankrolling warfare throughout the Middle East.
The substance is being utilised to equip terrorist organisations, bolster their financial reserves and poses a multifaceted danger to Western nations, including Britain.
The newly established Syrian administration, led by former insurgent Ahmed al-Sharaa, faces difficulties in controlling the multi-billion-pound Captagon syndicates, which are expanding outside the area.
Historically, the highly-addictive captagon was distributed clandestinely by Assad’s relatives and saturated the affluent social circles in locations such as the United Arab Emirates.
However, a recently compiled intelligence document discloses: “Amid rising sectarian conflict, there is very credible risk intelligence that opposition groups have turned to the Captagon trade to finance their campaigns against the central Government, including direction from Iranian/Shia proxies.”
Huge amounts of Captagon have been siezed by authorties. (Image: Daily Mirror)
These factions, including Hezbollah and even Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are understood to have inundated Lebanon and neighbouring regions with captagon.
The substance has already penetrated certain areas of Europe.
There are fears that the narcotic, which assisted in financing Iran’s covert Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Lebanese Hezbollah terror organisation, is being distributed by extremist groups. Captagon manufacturing facilities masquerading as lawful businesses under Assad’s administration have relocated underground and emerged in lawless regions of southern Syria.
The tablets are being transported from the Middle East into Europe, concealed within electrical equipment in heavy goods vehicles, posing as legal exports.
A single operation by Turkish security forces (pics) near the Syrian frontier uncovered automatic weapons and 200,000 captagon tablets valued at £2m on the streets. In Lebanon, smugglers linked to Hezbollah were discovered with 500,000 pills, worth £5 million on the street, preparing their narcotics cargo for Mediterranean transport.
Intelligence indicates the substance is already being trafficked through Turkey into Africa and has extended as far as the Netherlands to supply Western drug markets. A security source told the Daily Mirror: “Inevitably it will reach the UK and have the dual effect of feeding addiction, increasing crime, and it will also have a destabilising effect.
“There are known smuggling routes from the Netherlands into the UK, and that has become a real danger for UK society, and the market is very lucrative. This is a multi-billion-pound underground narco-marketplace, but it is almost certainly being used to swell the war chests of terrorist groups like the Islamic State.
“The known involved organisations involved are Iranian-backed proxies such as Hezbollah and even the Syrian National Army, but it is such a lucrative and now underground business that the Islamic State is also taking advantage of the trade opportunities.”
Our source said that it is also suspected that drug gangs have perfected the chemistry for starting narco-labs throughout Europe to make the drug more potent.
The pills sell for just £10 a piece. (Image: Daily Mirror)
The intelligence report warns that: “Amid rising sectarian conflict, particularly evident in southern Syria over the past week, there is a credible risk that opposition groups have turned to the Captagon trade to finance their campaigns against the central government. The drug, a stimulant that increases focus and wakefulness, has been abused by militants in battle and has fueled the party scene in Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“Before Assad’s fall, captagon exports propped up the Assad family and its patronage networks, presenting the sanctioned regime with an economic lifeline and a lever of regional influence and transforming Syria into a modern-day narco-state. The regime flooded markets with the in-demand drug and only reduced flows in a tit-for-tat strategy in pursuit of economic and diplomatic normalisation from neighbouring countries.
“These groups, along with other previously uninvolved actors both inside Syria and abroad, collectively recognise an opportunity to engage in the Captagon trade amid significant disruption to existing supply chains, while demand remains high.
“With prices elevated, the potential for substantial profit is considerable.”