Free Republic

Investigators found odd, little pills buried in the pockets of Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on Oct. 7. They were later identified as the drug Captagon, a powerful, synthetic stimulant. Captagon gained international notoriety in 2015 when it was discovered to be used by ISIS fighters to suppress fear and fatigue prior to carrying out terrorist operations. Now, because it’s cheap, as well as easy to make and smuggle, Captagon and its counterfeits are likely to remain a favorite tool of extremist militant groups to enhance their soldiers’ violent tendencies. Some reports have even labeled Captagon as “the jihadists’ drug,”...

As The Post's Liz Sly recently noted, the war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by "al Qaeda veterans, hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues and Western volunteers." On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas. Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon. A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war torn country's black market economy each year, likely giving militias access to...

The discovery of 1,000 pounds of the illegal stimulant khat in a Woodbury storage unit has led to felony drug-possession charges against a Minneapolis couple. Naser Omer Ali, 27, and his wife, Shukria Omer Ali, 25, were arrested March 8 after a Woodbury police officer discovered two bags of khat, a mild narcotic grown in East Africa, in their sport-utility vehicle. Police had pulled them over for an improper lane change and broken taillight. Police also discovered receipts for ministorage units in Minneapolis, Richfield and Woodbury. Washington County narcotics officers searched all three units, but found khat only in the...