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The Fifth Floor: Who's behind Syria's Captagon trade?

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30/06/2023 GMT

Who's behind Syria's Captagon trade?

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, Who's behind Syria's Captagon trade?

How the multi-billion dollar Captagon drug trade is controlled by Syrian elites

A joint investigation with the BBC reveals direct links between Syria’s trade in Captagon, and members of the armed forces and President Bashar al-Assad's family.

Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine-like drug, is causing huge problems around the Middle East, as millions of pills are smuggled out of Syria. BBC News Arabic collaborated with the investigative journalism network OCCRP to find out who's behind the trade. Emir Nader tells us about the direct links they discovered to leading members of the Syrian Armed Forces and President Bashar al-Assad's family. 

De-Russifying Kazakhstan 
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, young people in Kazakhstan have been increasingly reclaiming their roots. There’s growing talk of “decolonisation" in Central Asia’s largest country, whose language and culture were suppressed in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, as BBC Russian’s Nargiza Ryskulova explains.  

Pakistan floods: natural disaster or human failure?
This year's pre-monsoon rains have already caused disruption and deaths in Pakistan. It's brought back worrying memories of last year's catastrophic floods, in which a third of the country was under water.  BBC Urdu's Umer Draz Nangiana looked back at the 2022 floods in a series which revisited many of the worst hit areas to assess whether nature, or human failure, was to blame for the devastation.

Fake news in Iran 
A story suggesting that Steven Seagal - US actor and supporter of President Putin - had replaced General Sergei Shoigu as Russian Defence Minister, circulated in some Iranian media this week.  And it’s not the first time Iranian media have missed the joke, as Ali Hamedani explains.  

(Photo: Captagon pills found by border patrol forces. Credit: BBC)

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