The Syrian Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday June 29 a record seizure of 2.3 tons of captagon pills, or about 14 million tablets, in western Syria.
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Syrian security forces first seized 249 kilograms of captagon, a drug from the amphetamine family, hidden in industrial machinery ready for export in the port of Latakia.
The investigation then led Syrian forces to a "
warehouse containing drugs at a farm
" in neighboring Hama province, according to the ministry statement.
“
The weight of the confiscated bags amounted to 2,103 tons
the statement said, adding that 10 people were arrested and several vehicles confiscated during the operation.
According to common estimates, one kilogram of captagon typically contains 6,000 pills, so the cumulative number of pills seized exceeds 14 million, the largest seizure announced by the Syrian government in years.
Syria is considered the main producer of captagon and Saudi Arabia is the main consumer, according to a very recent study by the American think tank New Lines Institute.
Sold in the form of a small white tablet stamped with a characteristic logo representing two half-moons, captagon is originally a drug which was marketed from the beginning of the 1960s in Germany and whose active ingredient is fenetylline, a synthetic drug from the amphetamine family.
Several recent reports have accused senior officials of President Bashar al-Assad's regime of being at the heart of the booming captagon trafficking in the Middle East.