Inside the largest known captagon lab financing the Assad regime

Douma, Syria: The industrial-scale drug lab sat just up a hill from a main road on the western edge of Damascus, the city that was the seat of power for the Assad family which long denied any links to the narcotics trade.

Deposed president Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria was accused by Washington and others of profiteering from the production and sale of the addictive amphetamine-like stimulant commonly known as captagon, which became entrenched across the Middle East, from front lines of wars to construction sites and high-end parties.

Amphetamine pills, known as Captagon, found hidden in electrical components at the lab in Douma, Syria.Credit: AP

The annual trade in captagon is worth billions of dollars a year, experts say, and Western governments have linked the illicit trade in Syria to Assad’s brother, Maher al-Assad, and the Fourth Division of the Syrian army he commanded.

Maher’s whereabouts are unknown and Reuters could not reach him for comment on the allegations.

Assad’s fall after a lightning rebel offensive has allowed journalists for the first time to start searching in Syria for evidence of the captagon empire.

In the dark, cavernous warehouses at the abandoned site in the city of Douma, fighters who ousted Assad said they found thousands of pills hidden in furniture, fruit, decorative pebbles and voltage stabilisers that Reuters reporters saw stacked on pallets, with a trailer waiting outside.

A Syrian rebel shows captagon pills hidden inside a machine part.Credit: AP

Many of the pills were stamped with the double crescent logo or the word “lexus” that identifies captagon pills.

“These are ready for export,” said one of the fighters loyal to Syria’s new rulers, who took Reuters reporters inside and then cracked open one of the export-ready devices, revealing the pills.

Caroline Rose, director of the New York-based New Lines Institute Captagon Trade Project, said the global trade in the drug has an estimated value of $US10 billion ($15.7 billion) and put the ousted Syrian leadership’s annual profit from it at about $US2.4 billion.

The now-deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (right) and his brother Maher (centre) at the funeral of their father, Hafez al-Assad, in Damascus in 2000.Credit: AP

Rose, whose organisation tracks all publicly recorded captagon seizures and lab raids, said the site seen by Reuters appeared to be one of the biggest captagon labs ever found.

“It’s very possible that it’s the biggest one that existed in regime-held Syria,” she said.

“Up until the regime fell, there was not a single incident of a laboratory seizure on the database in regime-held territories.”

Barrels, boxes and bottles

Inside was a pill-press and, in the warehouse above, dozens of barrels, boxes and bottles of different chemicals.

Rebels showed reporters the factory and the chemicals used to produce the pills.Credit: AP

They included chloroform, potassium iodide, formaldehyde solution, ammonia solution, acetic acid, hydrochloric acid, cyclohexanone and petroleum ether 40-60 degrees C.

The chemicals were produced in countries including Britain, China, India, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, according to the labels.

Captagon was the brand name of a stimulant first produced in Germany in the 1960s to help treat attention conditions, including deficit disorders and narcolepsy.

It was discontinued, but an illicit version of the drug known as “poor man’s cocaine” continued to be produced in Eastern Europe and later in the Arab world, becoming prominent in the conflict that erupted in Syria following anti-government protests in 2011.

Machines used to manufacture captagon pills at the old chip factory in Douma, Syria.Credit: AP

It generates focus and staves off sleep and hunger. It has been banned in many countries, including the United States, and can have harmful side effects. Its prevalence has led to growing drug abuse in Gulf Arab states.

From ‘Captain Korn’ to captagon

Syrian businessman Fares al-Tout said his family had owned the factory before Syria’s civil war, when it was built to produce potato chips branded Captain Korn.

Captagon pills were hidden inside export products such as this melon, as well as pomegranates, machine parts and even doors.Credit: AP

He said it was seized in 2018 by a businessman close to Maher, Amer al-Khiti.

“They flipped it from the production of food to the production of captagon that killed Syria’s children in support of the Fourth Division,” Tout said.

The US imposed sanctions on Khiti in 2020 over his ties to the Assad authorities. Britain imposed sanctions on him in 2023, saying he “operates and controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs, including captagon”.

Khiti could not immediately be reached for comment.

A Reuters reporter on the scene found electoral pamphlets for Syria’s People’s Assembly, its legislature, lying on the floor, with Khiti listed as one of the candidates, as well as separate electoral cards with just his name on them.

In the days since Assad’s fall, rebel fighters say they have found several sites across the country where the drug was produced and prepared for export.

They have sometimes set fire to the pills or poured them down drains, according to videos shared online by accounts affiliated with them.

Reuters