In February last year, Antoine Kassis checked into the Windsor Golf Hotel & Country Club, a Victorian-style resort an hour north of Nairobi. Wearing an ill-fitting hooded sweatshirt, with gray stubbles and baggy eyes, he didn’t look like a typical upscale tourist.
The disheveled 58-year-old, who went by Tony, was a cousin of the recently deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He had traveled to Kenya planning to meet a supposed arms inspector from a Colombian rebel group and complete a $14 million deal to import 500 kilos of cocaine to Syria in return for military-grade weapons supplied by Iran and Russia.
Kassis didn’t know the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had been watching him for two years. As he waited in a cafe, U.S. agents accompanied by Kenyan police approached him. Two months later he was extradited to the U.S., ending a lengthy sting operation.
