Exclusive documents obtained by the French website Mediapart and the Italian daily "Domani" shed light on one of the largest seizures of Captagon produced in the Middle East, which took place in Salerno, Italy, and indicated what it called the links that developed between Italian criminals and their close associates. From the Libyan and Syrian regimes.
And Mediapart stated - in a joint article between Thomas Statius, Sarah Creta and Giovanni Tizian - that the Italian customs seized 14 tons (850 million tablets) of the drug Captagon - valued at about 14 billion euros and was hidden in 4 containers coming from Syria and destined for Libya. - It made the headlines of the Italian newspapers on July 1, 2020, and the press considered it the largest seizure of this industrial drug, close to amphetamine, which was presented at the time as the drug of the Islamic State that the fighters take before heading to the front.
Although the Italian media raced to show that the seizure of these substances would be a severe blow to the state organization that justice presents as the real sponsor of the operation, Laurent Laniel - from the European Control Center for Drugs and Addictions - described what the newspapers are talking about as a myth and not a fact, especially as the investigation took a turn completely different.
According to the Mediapart article, the investigation turned to Alberto Amato, 46, a Sicilian close to one of the most powerful criminal groups in the world. He was convicted in a case related to the import of cocaine from Brazil, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the case of Captagon containers sent to his company. registered in Switzerland.
But - according to the article - the Italian investigators discovered another fact behind this mafia network, according to the exclusive documents, as the cross-border police suspect that the threads of this operation have ends linked to close associates of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as some of the sons of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Important figures in Syria
The investigations made it possible to identify several important figures in Syria at the heart of this smuggling, as a source familiar with the matter explained that the containers left the port of Latakia in the far west of Syria on June 6, 2020, a port known to be one of the strongholds of the Assad regime, as it owns its supporters. Docks on an area of 150 hectares, and they facilitate smuggling, especially since it is impossible to load such a quantity of drugs without local complicity, according to investigators.
According to Mediapart, few in the port of Latakia would agree to talk because "people are afraid, these are not gangs, but the government here is the one who is doing the smuggling," as an expert on the file explains.
Two researchers from the American Institute for Strategic Research say that the responsibility for smuggling lies with another key figure in the Syrian regime, Ghassan Bilal, a major general in the Fourth Division of the army, and the former "butcher of Ghouta" who is one of the individuals providing the network's logistical requirements.
According to researchers and reports published by The New York Times, the Captagon is "smuggled by the state" through Ghassan Bilal himself under the command of Maher, brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but the inability to conduct an investigation into the matter inside Syria made Italian investigators follow up on the case. Another Syrian citizen who is close to the Assad family is Taher, nicknamed "Abu Karim", and he has a history in Italy.
Taher this - as the site says - the police suspect that he is related to two other quantities of Captagon previously seized in Greece and Saudi Arabia bearing his fingerprints.
The Italian police believe - despite the aforementioned suspect's denial of any connection with the Captagon containers - that he is the real hub of the two smuggling operations, especially after another suspect, Alberto Amato, admitted during his arrest by the police that Taher was indeed the one who sent the containers containing the drugs.
On the other hand, Italian investigators found that another person named Ali Ahmed - who is close to the Libyan regime and the official owner of a building in Rome where Mutassim Gaddafi was staying during his visits to the Italian capital - is among the people who have a direct relationship and communication with Alberto Amato and many of his associates. With him on the phone at least 8 times just weeks after the Captagon was held in the port of Salerno.
Investigators concluded that untraceable Ali Ahmed was linked to about 50 suspicious money transfers from Italy to several accounts in Britain, Libya, Malta and Russia in amounts amounting to tens of thousands of euros, in what investigators suspect is a clever compensation scheme to conceal the final destination of the funds. .