Crime Rings Plotted to Trade Cocaine for Syrian Weapons, Prosecutors Say

Hundreds of kilos of cocaine were set to arrive at a Syrian port hidden in a shipping container supposedly full of fruit. In exchange, weapons from the arsenal of Syria’s deposed dictator would arm one of the most notorious criminal organizations in Latin America. And millions of dollars would be laundered along the way.

This plot was made public last week in an unsealed grand jury indictment in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, where one of its key players made a first appearance. The charging document sketches the outlines of an alleged scheme that sheds light on a complex criminal network of drug cartels, rebel groups and rogue regimes spanning four continents.

Antoine Kassis, a Lebanese national named in the indictment and one of three men charged in connection with the plan, appeared in court on Friday after being extradited from Kenya. Prosecutors accused the men of involvement in a narco-terrorism conspiracy and of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, Colombia’s National Liberation Army.

The case is notable for the sinister international ties it seems to expose and because it appears to justify widespread concerns in the international community that the military arsenal of Bashar al-Assad, the longtime Syrian dictator who was deposed in December, could fall into criminal hands.

According to the indictment, first noted in the newsletter Court Watch, Mr. Kassis was a drug trafficker in Lebanon with high-level ties to members of the Assad regime, which was known for turning Syria into a narcostate.

The indictment links Mr. Kassis to a global money laundering network headquartered in Lebanon whose members were said to be working with the National Liberation Army, known as the E.L.N. for its initials in Spanish, and to have worked for the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.