Captagon pills. (Credit: AFP archives)
The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the trafficking of the stimulant drug captagon, a key source of income for the regime.
An AFP investigation in November found that Syria had become a narco state with the $10 billion captagon industry dwarfing all other exports and funding both Assad and many of his enemies.
The EU followed suit with the United States and Britain and imposed asset freezes and visa bans on Wasim Badi al-Assad and Samer Kamal al-Assad.
"The trade in amphetamine has become a regime-led business model, enriching the inner circle of the regime and providing it with revenue that contributes to its ability to maintain its policies of repression against the civilian population," the EU said.
A third cousin of the president, Mudar Rifaat al-Assad, was also included on the blacklist, although no explicit reason was given.
The US Treasury Department says Samer Kamal al-Assad owns a factory in the coastal city of Latakia that produced 84 million captagon pills in 2020.
Others targeted in the EU sanctions include Nouh Zaitar, an infamous Lebanese drug lord who remains at large, and Hassan Dekko, a Lebanese-Syrian drug kingpin with high-level connections in both countries.
Saudi Arabia is the largest recipient of the drug that was derived from a once-legal treatment for narcolepsy and attention deficit disorder.
The EU also imposed sanctions on private security firms for helping the Syrian regime recruit fighters and on the Russian engineering and construction company Stroytransgaz for its control of the country's largest phosphate mines.
An AFP investigation in November found that Syria had become a narco state with the $10 billion captagon industry dwarfing all other exports and funding both Assad...