The Islamist-led rebels in Syria say that after toppling the regime, they uncovered several drug factories – with direct ties to the Assad family. In the factories, the drug captagon, which washed over the Middle East from Syria during the war and became crucial for the country’s economy, is said to have been manufactured.
When SVT’s team visits a designated factory in the Damascus suburb of Douma, traces of drug manufacturing remain, including in the form of quantities of chemicals and tablets.
– You can feel the pungent chemical smell of the production, says SVT’s foreign reporter Carl Fridh Kleberg, who was there together with photographer Pablo Torres.
Secret tunnels in the mountain
In another part of the capital Damascus is the palace where the overthrown dictator Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher al-Assad has lived. A long staircase takes SVT’s team from the palace and deep underground to tunnels cut into the rock. Here, a network of secret passages has been discovered after the fall of the regime – tunnels that were used in various ways by the Assad family but which now attract many curious Damascus residents.
The tunnel network includes, among other things, garages, security doors, storage, offices and spaces for servers.
– It’s like a bunker down there. One tunnel turns into another branching off, and we started to feel like we might get lost. After a while, a car suddenly came out of nowhere, says Carl Fridh Kleberg.
– Then we saw light far ahead and came out in another part of the mountain where we could look out over Damascus. There, the opening was big enough for a truck to drive in and out.
“Shows the regime’s riches of imagination”
It has not yet been determined what the tunnels have been used for.
– They could be escape tunnels, or have been built to secretly bring things in or out of the palace. This shows the imagination of the regime, that you can even build something like this. And of course one wonders who needs this type of tunnel system, says Carl Fridh Kleberg.