Lebanon captures notorious drug kingpin tied to Hezbollah and Assad regime
Lebanese authorities on Thursday arrested the country’s most notorious drug lord, Nouh Zaiter, after years on the run.
Zaiter, 48, was apprehended in a targeted military operation in the village of Kneisseh in Lebanon’s eastern Beqaa Valley, the army said.
Lebanese media reported that Zaiter used the chaos of Syria’s civil war to expand his smuggling empire across the porous border. He is also widely believed to have longstanding ties with senior figures in Hezbollah and with the regime of ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Captagon trade flourished during the Syrian conflict, with Syria becoming the world’s top exporter of the stimulant, according to international watchdogs. Hundreds of millions of Captagon pills were trafficked from Syria to Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, where the drug became popular among wealthy youth for its stimulant effects and low cost.
Born in 1977 in a rural area of the Beqaa known for cannabis cultivation, Zaiter reportedly studied briefly at the American University of Beirut before spending time as a refugee in Switzerland in the early 1990s. He later returned to Lebanon, formed an armed militia and built an extensive smuggling and manufacturing operation. His name has been linked to drug routes extending into Europe and North Africa. The United States and the European Union have both imposed sanctions on him.
During the Syrian war, as Assad’s regime faced heavy Western sanctions, Damascus allegedly relied on Captagon exports to generate critical revenue. Captagon also became a tool of political leverage, used to pressure Arab and Muslim countries that had cut ties with Syria.
Thursday’s arrest of Zaiter is seen as a major step in those efforts.
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