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A notorious Syrian-Lebanese trafficker widely known as the “Captagon King,” has been released from a Lebanese prison after completing a seven-year sentence for drug manufacturing and trafficking. Judicial sources confirmed the release of Hassan Daqqou to Daraj, OCCRP's Lebanese partner.
A video circulated online showing family and friends celebrating his return home.
Daqqou was arrested in Beirut in 2021 in connection with a massive shipment of nearly 94 million Captagon pills, which was intercepted in Malaysia while en route to Saudi Arabia. In August 2022, the Beirut Criminal Court sentenced him to seven years of hard labor, a sentence that had been reduced from life imprisonment due to his alleged cooperation with a security agency, to which he provided information regarding the shipment.
At the time of the investigation, Daqqou’s attorney said his client was a victim of a “fabricated media and political campaign” and said not a single Captagon pill was found on Daqqou or at any of his properties.
According to 651 pages of handwritten interrogation transcripts obtained by OCCRP, Daqqou rose from poverty, selling watches on the streets of Beirut, to become a central figure in Lebanon’s Captagon trade. The documents shed light on his personal trajectory and reveal his role in a complex regional drug network involving the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, and their allies.
In his own testimony, Daqqou described himself as having “four faces”: a businessman; an operative working with the Security Bureau of the Syrian Army’s 4th Division, led by Maher al-Assad, brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; a collaborator with Hezbollah during the Syrian conflict; and a participant in anti-narcotics operations linked to Syria.
Daqqou has faced multiple international sanctions, having been blacklisted by the U.S., the U.K., and the EU since 2023. Despite his incarceration, the kingpin allegedly continued to run his illicit trade from behind bars, with reports indicating that political pressure from Hezbollah allowed Daqqou to stay in a “comfortable” prison cell equipped with internet access throughout his sentence.
