"Inside the drugs factory: How captagon is fuelling the war in Sudan" 28 July 2025

A glance inside reveals why: machines and chemical products that the Sudanese authorities say were used to produce around 1,000 captagon pills an hour...The RSF, according to security sources, either gives it away to its fighters to increase alertness and suppress hunger or sells it to civilians for profit...

According to Hamza, those tablets bore the hilelein, the double crescent symbol, which has become the unofficial trademark of illegal captagon production...Beside the used tablet press is the crate that the machine appears to have arrived in. On one side, a paper shipping label suggests it was imported via Amass Middle East Shipping Services, a Dubai-based company. Entering the freight identifier number on the label into Amass’ online tracking system yields no results...MEE asked Amass Middle East Shipping Services for comment but did not receive a response. The RSF also did not respond to requests for comment... The RSF is known to have close ties to the UAE...

The bags come in two kinds: one is labelled as veterinary food supplements, the other as electrolytes for animals. Both say they were produced in Syria and are not intended for human consumption...The distributor listed on the packets, Hi Pharm Veterinary Medicines Co, does not appear on Syria’s business registry...Hi Pharm is listed as having a Yahoo email address, which MEE tried to contact, only for the message to bounce back. It also carries an address in Barzeh, a Damascus suburb, “next to the Scientific Research Center”...