"The Captagon factory? Straight ahead." On the outskirts of Damascus, just a 20-minute drive from the centre of the Syrian capital, lay a sprawling industrial complex.
Professed to be a soap factory, its products were anything but clean.
Rebels had broken into the complex as they pushed towards the capital city and found millions of Captagon pills and industrial quantities of precursor chemicals.
They had found plastic fruits that, when broken open, would reveal hundreds of tiny pills, along with fake copper coils stuffed with the narcotic and plasterboard with sheets of Captagon stashed inside.
For years, neighbouring states accused Bashar al-Assad's regime of being behind the world's largest Captagon production and export operation a claim it denied.
Jordan and the Gulf states begged the Assad regime to stop sending the drug over its borders, but the flow continued unhindered.
Bu hikaye The Guardian dergisinin December 17, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye The Guardian dergisinin December 17, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
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