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Rabat – Morocco’s General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST) played a key role in an international investigation that led to the conviction of a Lebanese-Syrian drug trafficker in the United States on narco-terrorism charges.
A federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found 59-year-old Antoine Kassis guilty of narco-terrorism conspiracy and providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization after a five-day trial, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Court documents revealed that Kassis, based in Lebanon, used his connections within the former Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad to traffic cocaine and weapons. He allegedly coordinated large-scale drug shipments and laundered proceeds through international networks involving accomplices in Latin America.
Even after the fall of the Assad regime, prosecutors said Kassis maintained access to weapons stockpiles previously supplied to Syria by countries including Russia and Iran.
Since April 2024, Kassis and his associates in Colombia and Mexico reportedly agreed to supply military-grade weapons from Syria to the National Liberation Army (ELN) in exchange for hundreds of kilograms of cocaine. The ELN is a Colombia-based armed group that the United States has designated as a terrorist organization.
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Prosecutors said Kassis claimed to be a cousin of Assad and worked closely with Maher al-Assad, the former president’s brother, as well as other senior Syrian military officials. He allegedly paid $10,000 per kilogram of cocaine trafficked through the port of Latakia.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia added that evidence presented during the trial also pointed to the Syrian regime’s involvement in drug-related revenues, including taxing illicit substances passing through its territory and producing Captagon, a controlled amphetamine.
Kassis traveled from Lebanon to Kenya to meet with an ELN weapons inspector and later arranged a shipment of fruit from Colombia to the Syrian port of Latakia, according to the office. The container was intended to conceal about 500 kilograms of cocaine, which Kassis planned to distribute across the Middle East.
Authorities said his network moved nearly $100 million in less than 18 months and laundered money for the Sinaloa Cartel and Hamas. The US designates the latter a foreign terrorist organization.
Kassis was arrested in Kenya and extradited to the United States in May 2025 with the help of international partners, including Moroccan security services. He now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and could receive life imprisonment when sentenced on July 2.
