Lebanon hands 'Captagon King' hard labour prison sentence

BEIRUT -- A Lebanese court handed a man known as the "Captagon King" a seven-year sentence with hard labour Thursday (December 8) for producing and trafficking the illegal drug, a judicial source said.

This is the first time a major drug baron has been convicted in a Captagon case in Lebanon.

Hassan Dekko, a Lebanese-Syrian drug kingpin with high-level political connections in both countries, is accused of once running an empire out of a Lebanese border village in the notoriously lawless Bekaa Valley.

Hizbullah wields heavy influence in the northern Bekaa Valley (Baalbek-Hermel), and protects drug dealers in the area, political activist Hussein Ataya told Al-Mashareq earlier this year.

The Iran-backed party has a long and well-documented history of producing and trafficking illegal drugs from Lebanon, and has in recent years moved the nexus of its narcotics operation inside Syria after coming under increasing pressure.

Crackdown on drugs

Lebanese security forces arrested Dekko in April 2021 after several major Captagon hauls, which came as part of an ongoing crackdown on drugs.

The Lebanese army on June 3 targeted the home of another notorious drug baron, Ali Munther Zuaiter, aka "Abu Salleh", and has been conducting large-scale raids on drug-trafficking cells in the eastern Bekaa Valley.

Zuaiter fled despite sustaining bullet injuries to his leg and abdomen.

"The war on drugs has not ended and is ongoing," Lebanese Army Chief Gen. Joseph Aoun said at the time.

"Dekko was handed seven years of hard labour and convicted of manufacturing captagon pills, and smuggling them abroad," the judicial source said.

The court sentenced 25 others in absentia, including three of Dekko's brothers, to hard labour for life.

The Beirut court that issued the verdict is not taking part in an open-ended, nationwide judges' strike that has paralysed the judiciary since August.

Judges have suspended their work as rampant inflation eats away at their salaries, paralysing the judiciary and leaving detainees in limbo -- the latest outcome of Lebanon's years-long financial crisis.

Many Lebanese blame Hizbullah for contributing to and exacerbating the crisis.

Most of the global Captagon production originates in Syria, spurring an illegal $10 billion industry, according to estimates drawn from official data, making the drug the country's largest export by far.

It also has sunk deep roots in Lebanon as that country's economy has collapsed.

Rampant corruption

In court documents obtained by AFP, Dekko denied any involvement in drug trafficking, claiming he worked with the Syrian military.

But Lebanese security sources claim that some of the businesses he owns, including a pesticide factory in Jordan, a car dealership in Syria and a fleet of tanker trucks, are common covers for drug lords.

The court found that Dekko was in contact with drug smugglers in Syria and that he asked one of the defendants in the same case to purchase materials used to produce Captagon pills.

Dekko previously worked with police intelligence in Lebanon, the court found, leaking information about some Captagon shipments smuggled abroad.

But the investigation showed he purposefully failed to inform them about other shipments, the source said.

Customs and anti-narcotics officials have previously revealed that for every shipment of illicit drugs they seize, another nine make it through.

Lebanese authorities have ramped up efforts to counter Captagon production and trafficking after backlash from the Gulf states, where many of the shipments of the amphetamine-type narcotic have been apprehended.