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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| EU sanctions cousins of Syria's Assad for alleged drug trafficking |
| 2023-04-25 |
| [Shafaq News] The European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... on Monday imposed sanctions on cousins of Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad Leveler of Latakia... over the trafficking of stimulant drug captagon, a key source of income for the regime. An AFP investigation in November found that Syria has become a narco state with the $10 billion industry in captagon dwarfing all other exports and funding both Assad and many of his enemies. The latest move saw the EU follow Western allies, the United States and Britannia, in imposing 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, Leb ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... 's most famous drug lord who is on the run from authorities, and Hassan Dekko, a Lebanese-Syrian drug kingpin with high-level connections in both countries. Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. Until the accession of King Salman the place was under the thumb of Wahhabi holy men and was the driving force behind Salafist terrorism world-wide. Western intelligence agencies, even the dumb ones, were wise to this from at least September 12th, 2001, but politicians were reluctant to upset the international applecart. Once we started assassinating people instead of invading them the Saudis quietly folded the Death to Infidelstent, did some assassinating of their own, started modernizing, and pretended that Osama bin Laden thing had never happened... has become by far the largest market for captagon, an amphetamine derived from a once-legal treatment for narcolepsy and attention disorder, with the inexpensive drug drawing both the wealthy party set and poor labourers in an Islamic country where alcohol is taboo. The EU also imposed sanctions against private security firms for helping the Syrian regime recruit fighters and Russian engineering and construction company Stroytransgaz over its control of the country's largest phosphate mines. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 The Assad involvement in the narcotics trade is historic. Throughout the 1990s when the family controlled economic activity in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, the Assad family benefited from illegal drug trafficking. In the next decade a number of Assad family members were 'listed' by the USA for involvement in narcotics trafficking. To this date it remains one important way for Syrian military officers to augment their paychecks. |
| Posted by: Slavising Unineting5672 2023-04-25 10:31 |