In the wake of the Assad regime's fall in early December 2024, the new interim government’s security and police forces were busier than ever, uncovering a series of large-scale Captagon labs that had belonged to the former regime and arresting key former officials and family members who carried out war crimes. The pace and scale of the laboratory busts were historic—New Lines’ Captagon Trade Project identified a whopping nine labs interdicted, along with industrial-scale stockpiles that amounted to well over 161,000 pills in the first two months of the new Syrian government.
And while seeking to walk a fine line in pursuing accountability and justice without inciting an uprising from regime loyalists, the new interim government was able to arrest 41 people and issue 92 warrants against former officials and Assad family members that played key roles in persecuting Syrian citizens, torturing voices of opposition, killing innocent civilians en masse, and bolstering illicit economies.
By February, however, seizures and arrests began to slow, indicating that the new interim government encountered its first major obstacle as it pursued accountability and justice. From February to June, the new government only conducted two lab seizures, 350% down from the first lab interdictions conducted in the aftermath of Assad’s fall. And though the government set up the Transitional Justice Authority in February and continued to arrest some rank-and-file officers of Syria’s Fourth Armoured Division, most of their major targets had fled Syria, making it far more difficult to identify their whereabouts, monitor their transactions, and pursue accountability.
Yet, this all changed with a complex operation beyond Syria’s borders that led to the arrest of Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, Wassim Badia al-Assad, a key player in the regime’s security and illicit apparatus. Wasim was a high-level figure within the Assad family inner circle, perpetuating the Syrian regime’s repressive security landscape through funding Assadist militias and Captagon trafficking operations in Latakia and Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Singled out
An April 2022 New Lines Institute report identified Wasim as a leader in the regime’s Captagon drug trade industry, which was later followed by US, UK, and EU sanctions in 2023 and 2025 and on him personally for his engagement in repressive regime security operations, illicit drug production, and illicit smuggling. Of course, following the fall of the Assad regime in early December 2024, al-Sharaa’s vow to pursue justice against regime elements, and the new government’s campaign to dismantle Syrian drug markets, Wasim had no choice but to flee Syria, disappearing along with many of his family members.
Read more: Syria's drug networks remain active despite Assad's ouster
Starting in February, the regime's security services began their pursuit to find Wasim, picking up on intelligence reports that he had fled to Tripoli, Lebanon, where many of his ties to Hezbollah-linked smuggling syndicates and allies of the former regime operated. Yet, Wassim still desired to return to Syria and to retrieve hidden cash and gold bars that were hidden at an abandoned farm in Arida Valley along the Syrian-Lebanese border that he was not able to collect while fleeing Syria amid the regime’s collapse.
It was unclear whether Wasim sought to stay in Syria or return to Tripoli, but it is possible that he intended to return to sustain his illicit enterprises, particularly given that new supply shortages of captagon and other illicit products in Syria had raised potential profit margins.
Wasim’s return to Syria would also empower former regime officials, loyalists, and partners in Lebanon who had come to form a ‘belt’ along the Lebanese-Syrian border. These regime loyalists and Hezbollah-linked elements even prompted clashes, kidnappings, and targeted killings against the new Syrian administration in late March and early April, as a way to challenge Damascus for control over key cross-border smuggling routes and undermine their capacity.
Black Gold Ambush
Recognising Wasim’s imperative to return, Syria’s Ministry of Interior and Intelligence Agency forged an operation coined Black Gold Ambush, posturing a Syrian officer who posed as a corrupt, double agent that could help Wasim forge documents and retrieve his stashed cash and gold bars in the Talkalakh area of western Homs, near the Syrian-Lebanese border.
The Syrian agencies embedded tracking devices onto fake government convoys, monitoring his reentry into Syria to an abandoned farm where he reportedly sought to retrieve several gold bars and cash. After sealing off the three connecting roads to the farm, a Syrian special operations unit arrived at the scene to arrest Wasim.
Photos of his detention soon appeared, one with an HTS security officer pressing his foot on Wasim’s shoulder while seated on a cot in a jail cell, the other mug shots depicting a clean-shaven, exhausted profile of a once-notorious, ‘untouchable’ figure within the Assad family and regime security apparatus.
The operation—using double agents to lure Wasim from exile in Lebanon to Syria to his arrest—not only illustrates the increased intelligence and investigative capacity of Syria’s new administration, but also shines a light on a new layer of Damascus’ strategy for justice and accountability: seeking out regime elements both within and beyond Syria’s borders.
Wasim's arrest coincided with that of other former regime allies, with arrests against individuals like the Al-Baqir militia’s Fadi Al-Afiss and the regime General Intelligence Directorate’s Dawoud al-Touqan, conducted across Syria. Already, arrests of former regime elements have yielded new documentation about the vast network of illicit syndicates for drug, antiquities, and arms tracking and their method of money laundering through Iraq, Cyprus, UAE, and Lebanon-based front companies.
Providing assistance
As more arrests take place and, with it, information about the former Assad regime’s war crimes and illicit activities, it is vital for the US, its partners, and Syria’s regional neighbours to provide assistance to Damascus that can aid justice and accountability efforts. Syria’s new Transitional Justice Authority must establish a multinational task force that includes regional neighbours and international partners, such as the US and the EU, for the exchange of intelligence on key former regime figures and potential opportunities for prosecution.
There are numerous existing mechanisms that external actors can utilise to support the new Syrian administration and help address key ‘gaps’ in accountability. The US’ existing interagency counter-Captagon mechanism should work to help identify the whereabouts of key Assad family members and allies that played a role in carrying out regime illicit activities, such as Khodr Taher, Taher Al-Kayyali, and Samer Kamal Al-Assad.
