ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States on Tuesday announced it had slammed sanctions on two cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as other affiliates, over captagon drug trafficking amid numerous pleas by Washington to Arab states not to normalize ties with Syria.
Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant which has been spreading across the drug market in the Middle East, with Syria as the main supplier, and Saudi Arabia the primary consumer of the substance.
The US Department of Treasury said sanctions were being imposed on two of the Syrian president’s cousins Samer Kamal al-Assad, who owns a factory in Syria that produced 84 million captagon pills, and Wassim Badi al-Assad.
“Syria has become a global leader in the production of highly addictive Captagon, much of which is trafficked through Lebanon,” the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Director Andrea M. Gacki said.
The sanctions also targeted Khalid Qaddour, a Syrian businessman, and Imad Abu Zureik, a leader of a Syrian paramilitary group. Lebanese-Syrian dual national Hassan Mohammed Daqqou, infamously known as “the King of Captagon” as well as Lebanese drug lord Noah Zaitar, also pursed by authorities in Lebanon.
“With our allies, we will hold accountable those who support Bashar al-Assad’s regime with illicit drug revenue and other financial means that enable the regime’s continued repression of the Syrian people”, Gacki added.
The decision blocks any assets in the US owned by those sanctioned, while also making any transactions with them illegal.
A report by the New Lines Institute last year on captagon trade in the region said that Syrian state figures, members of allied militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah benefit from the process.
"Lebanon has served as an extension of the Syrian captagon trade, a key transit point for captagon flows," the report said.
The sanctions come as the US has repeated its opposition to restoring ties with Syria and has expressed its dissatisfaction at Arab allies moving to do so.
Earlier this month, Assad visited the UAE for the second time since 2011 on Sunday, where he was received UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan who said it was time for Syria to return to the Arab fold. Turkey, the main opponent to the Syrian regime throughout the war, has also warmed up to the Damascus government.
The US has said it remains firm in its stance that it will not engage with the Assad regime without any accountability for war-time abuses.
Assad is accused by the international community, including the US, of committing war crimes in rebel-held areas and for brutal repression of opposition in regime-controlled parts of the country. Largely assisted by Russian air attacks, Assad restored control over most of the country after 12 years of war killed half a million people and displaced almost half of the Syrian population.
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