Italian police have just carried out what they said might be the largest drug bust ever and have placed blame on the Islamic State.
Three shipping containers containing a staggering 84 million “Captagon” pills — about 15.4 tons worth of amphetamines — were seized at the port of Salerno in southwest Italy, investigators announced Wednesday. The Guardia di Finanza police said the operation broke records both in quantity and value. Col. Domenico Napolitano, commander of the Guardia di Finanza in Naples, told the Guardian that the illicit drugs were found in well-concealed paper and steel cylinders.
“We believe that, during the COVID-19 lockdown, the production and distribution of synthetic drugs in Europe practically ground to a halt, and therefore, many traffickers have turned to Syria, where production does not seem to have slowed down during the pandemic,” Napolitano said.
“It is known that ISIS/Daesh finances its terrorist activities in large part with the trafficking of synthetic drugs produced largely in Syria, which has become the leading world producer of amphetamines in recent years,” police said, according to CNN.
The pills bear the Captagon logo, which was initially a legitimate brand of psychostimulant containing the synthetic drug fenethylline. Although discontinued, black-market pills bearing the logo and containing amphetamines are still found in the Middle East and are known to be used by ISIS militants for energy and for bringing money into the terrorist organization.
“The amphetamine pills we seized had a symbol on them,” Napolitano explained. “Two half-moons — the same symbols found on the Captagon seized in the ISIS hideouts in the Middle East. It is the same symbol found on the tablets the terrorists consumed before the attack on the Bataclan in Paris in 2015.”
One of the drug’s users, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who used to fight in the Syrian civil war, described the chemical’s allure to New York magazine back in 2015.
“When I take Captagon, it doesn’t matter how tired I am, I can keep walking,” he described. “It doesn’t matter how cold it is — I can take off my shirt and keep going even in the rain. It even makes you want sex more.”
Despite assertions from Italian police that the drug came from ISIS, the Syrian government, which is allied with Iran and Hezbollah, has also been accused of producing, or at least being complicit, in its shipment from Syrian ports, Ozy reported last year.
Investigators believe that Italian organized crime syndicate Camorra, a fragmented group of criminal groups with a long history in Italy, was involved in the massive delivery. How or where the Captagon pills were going to be distributed from beyond their port arrival is not immediately clear.
“It is clear the hand of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, is behind drug trafficking of such proportions,” Napolitano said. “A billion-euro drug load cannot arrive in a port without the knowledge of the mafia.”
Brig. Gen. Gabriele Failla, head of the financial police in Naples and the surrounding province, told CNN that he thinks several criminal elements might have combined forces to make the enormous purchase. He didn’t think a single group would be able to handle moving more than 84 million pills.
“This is a remarkable evidence of the ‘nexus’ between terror financing and organized crime interests,” Failla said.
A spokesperson with the State Department told the Washington Examiner that the U.S. has seen ISIS use drug smuggling in the past to fund its terrorist operations.
“We have seen these reports and we welcome the efforts of the Italian government on this matter. We look forward to hearing more from our Italian partners on this seizure,” the spokesperson said.
