Fausta's Blog

Colombia’s Perilous Peace Talks
Former President Álvaro Uribe warns that negotiations ‘validate’ FARC terrorists.

Under Colombia’s 1991 constitution, a criminal conviction disqualified an individual from running for office. Now the “framework for peace,” an amendment to the constitution that was signed into law last year by President Juan Manuel Santos, converts FARC atrocities into “political crimes” and gives the attorney general discretion over which ones will be prosecuted.

By categorizing violent crime and even what are essentially crimes against humanity—including the recruitment of child soldiers—as “political crimes,” the Santos government can now offer the FARC political “eligibility” in exchange for an end to hostilities.

Make no mistake, the FARC insist that they will not surrender their weapons, will not disarm, and will not serve time in prison. They want a similar deal to that of the IRA in Northern Ireland.

That should not come as a surprise, considering how the IRA trained the FARC, and how now the IRA is lending its expertise to the negotiations taking place in Havana.

Following up on yesterday’s post on Iran’s infiltration in Latin America,

Demonstrators holding photos of the 85 people who died in the 1994 AMIA bombing

BBC: Iran ‘in Latin America terror plot’ – Argentina prosecutor
An Argentine prosecutor has accused Iran of trying to infiltrate countries in Latin America to sponsor and carry out “terrorist activities”.

AP: Argentine Prosecutor: Iran Infiltrating Continent

NYT: Prosecutor in Argentina Sees Iranian Plot in Latin America

In his report, Mr. Nisman contended that the 1994 bombing was not an isolated event. “It has to be investigated as a segment in a larger sequence,” he said in a report summary, pointing to parallels with the case of two Guyanese men convicted in 2010 of conspiring to attack Kennedy International Airport in New York.

In that case, a former Guyanese government official, Abdul Kadir, opened himself to a claim by prosecutors in New York that he secretly worked for years as a spy for Iran when he said during cross-examination that he had drafted regular reports to Iran’s ambassador in Venezuela on plans to infiltrate Guyana’s military and police. The plot to attack the airport did not advance beyond the conceptual stage.

Mr. Nisman, who has investigated the bombing since 2005, suggested that “criminal plans” by Iran could be under development in Latin America, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay.

And let’s not forget the direct flights fron Tehran to Caracas.

WSJ: Iran in America’s Backyard
Remember that botched attempt to blow up John F. Kennedy airport in 2007?

Connecting the dots, Mr. Nisman found that one of the Iranian agents in the plan to incinerate JFK—Guyanese citizen Abdul Kadir—had a “close relationship and hierarchical subordination” to Rabbini. But Kadir’s activities were supported from other countries as well. He “was very important to the plot, not only because he was a successful leader, but also due to his deeply rooted connections with Iran and its embassy in Venezuela.” And he was active in countries throughout the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Tobago; Dominica; Barbados; Antigua and Barbuda; Surinam; and Grenada. “His activity as an Iranian leader allowed him to establish and strengthen relations with other regional Islamic leaders and by 1998 he was the representative of the Secretariat of the Caribbean Islamic Movement.”

It is unlikely that either Kadir or Rabbani would have gotten as far as they did without the use of a seemingly benign activity to shield them. “The dual use of institutions controlled by the Iranian Regime, the cultural, religious and propagation activities conducted by its agents abroad and the radical indoctrination of its supporters” become operational with “the construction of intelligence stations,” the summary explains. These have “the capability to provide logistic, economic and operative support to terrorist attacks decided by the Islamic regime.”

Telegraph (h/t Gates of Vienna): Argentine prosecutor accuses Iran of establishing Latin America terrorist networks
An Argentine prosecutor accused Iran on Wednesday of establishing terrorist networks in Latin America dating back to the 1980s and said he would send his findings to courts in the affected countries.

The Economist, back in January: Argentine-Iranian relations
A pact with the devil?

US State Department: Country Reports on Terrorism 2012

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee (MENA) released the following statement,500-Page Indictment by AMIA Bombing Prosecutor Reveals Troubling Extent of Iran’s Infiltration into Latin America, Says Ros-Lehtinen,

This indictment reaffirms the fact that Iran’s dual use of diplomatic and cultural offices is utilized to deepen its infiltration into the Hemisphere

She asserts,

“I’m deeply troubled by the findings by Alberto Nisman, whose 500-page indictment cites extensive evidence of Iran’s ‘intelligence and terrorist network’ in various Latin American nations. This report shows clearly that the 1994 AMIA bombing was not an isolated event, but rather that it was part of a larger and still ongoing scheme by the Iranian regime and its proxies to expand their influence in the Western Hemisphere and threaten U.S. security interests in the region.

“This indictment reaffirms the fact that Iran’s dual use of diplomatic and cultural offices is utilized to deepen its infiltration into the Hemisphere. In particular, the indictment implicates the fugitive Mohsen Rabbani, the mastermind behind the AMIA bombing, as the primary coordinator of Iran’s nefarious activities in the region. Another disturbing example cited in the indictment which demonstrates the scope of Iran’s activities is that of the two Guayenese men who were convicted in 2010 for conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack on JFK airport in New York. These examples underscore the danger that the Iranian regime presents not only through its nuclear program, but also through its unrelenting efforts to export its violent radicalism to our own Hemisphere

I may remind you that Iran’s Minister of Defense is the mastermind of the AMIA attack.

Earlier today I listened to a blogger call on tomorrow’s Center for Security Policy’s conference, Chavismo without Chavez

Frank Gaffney, Michael Braun, Former Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and Jon Perdue, Director of Latin American Programs at the Fund for American Studies, talked about tomorrow’s topics, particularly the collective threat Venezuela, Hezbollah, the FARC and Iran present to the Western Hemisphere and the US homeland.

I had the opportunity to ask Jon Perdue is it would be correct to assume that Timothy Tracy‘s detention in Venezuela (like Alan Gross‘ in Cuba) on espionage charges is orchestrated by Cuba. Perdue’s reply was yes, and both men are now political pawns of Cuba, which not only controls all of Venezuela’s intelligence services, but also the issuing of passports and ingress and egress into Venezuela.

My other question was to Michael Braun, are the direct flights from Iran to Venezuela still continuing after Hugo Chavez’s death? He replied yes.

After the CSP presentation, the call had Col. Alan West, who talked about tomorrow’s 9:30 AM-11:30 AM press conference by three families of Navy SEAL Team VI special forces servicemen,

The areas of inquiry at the press conference will include but not be limited to:

1. How President Obama and Vice President Biden, having disclosed on May 4, 2011, that Navy Seal Team Six carried out the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in the master terrorist’s death, put a retaliatory target on the backs of the fallen heroes.
2. How and why high-level military officials sent these Navy SEAL Team VI heroes into battle without special operations aviation and proper air support.
3. How and why the military brass carries out too many ill-prepared missions to boost their standing with top-level military brass and the Commander-in-Chief in order that they can be promoted.
4. How the military restricts special operations servicemen and others from engaging in timely return fire when fired upon by the Taliban and other terrorist groups and interests, thus jeopardizing the servicemen’s lives.
5. How and why the denial of requested pre-assault fire may have contributed to the shoot down of the Navy SEAL Team VI helicopter and the death of these special operations servicemen.
6. How Afghani forces accompanying the Navy SEAL Team VI servicemen on the helicopter were not properly vetted and how they possibly disclosed classified information to the Taliban about the mission, resulting in the shoot down of the helicopter.
7. How military brass, while prohibiting any mention of a Judeo-Christian God, invited a Muslim cleric to the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes who disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen by damning them as infidels to Allah. A video of the Muslim cleric’s “prayer” will be shown with a certified translation.

The press conference will be livestreamed. I’ll post a link on it tomorrow.

The remaining blogger call discussed True The Vote’s settlement agreement

“True the Vote can now begin reconstruction and review of the 18th Congressional District election race between Colonel Allen West and Patrick Murphy,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. “We must stop this scandalous cycle of ignoring failures in our electoral process when the campaigns and cameras go home. Understanding how failures in administration can effect elections, as we saw in St. Lucie County, will help prevent them from occurring in the future. We cannot allow slipshod standards to become pandemic across our country’s election processes – citizens can and will stand up in defense of election integrity.”

If you can make it to the CSP conference tomorrow, here’s the information.

Today at 4:30PM EDT Silvio Canto’s guest will be Jon Perdue, author of the must-read book on Latin America, The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.

Jon Perdue is the director of Latin America programs at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. In this capacity he travels extensively throughout Latin America, lecturing at universities and think tanks (in English and Spanish) and participating in conferences that bring together Latin America scholars and policymakers.

The Amazon page describes The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism as

The War of All the People elucidates the ideological and political war against the United States, capitalism, and the widely accepted tenets of modernity. Spearheading this war are Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, two “revolutionary” leaders who have forged an active alliance hell-bent on destroying the established order in the developed world.

Adopted as the operative name of his war on U.S. “imperialism,” the “War of All the People” is Hugo Chávez’s plan to supplant U.S. dominance in the hemisphere with “twenty-firstcentury socialism.” Although U.S. presidents and policymakers have treated Chávez’s antics with benign neglect thus far, his 2010 missile accord with a soon-to-be nuclear Iran has escalated the threat to an unavoidable level. Chávez’s ability to thwart sanctions on Iran by providing oil, and possibly uranium, to the corrupt regime makes his bluster more sinister than the simple rant of a third world caudillo.

The War of All the People goes beyond merely pondering the unlikely alliance between seemingly antithetical cultures. Scholars, students, and policymakers will learn about the long history of cooperation between Middle Eastern and Latin American terrorist groups, from the radical mecca of Algiers in the 1960s, where Che Guevara and Amilcar Cabral both resided, to the Tricontinental Conference in Cuba in 1966, which first brought Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat together.

I have recommended the book in the past, and can not emphasize enough that this is a must-read.

Listen to the podcast live at 4:30PM, or to the archived podcast at your convenience.

In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, at least according to the chavista-controlled board of election, won last night. Henrique Capriles Radonski demanded a recount, asserting that electoral fraud had taken place. Here’s his speech last night (in Spanish),

In his speech, Capriles said he wants the Cuban military out of Venezuela’s government and institutions. As Mary O’Grady said, The Castro regime wasn’t going to allow an easy victory for the opposition candidate who has pledged to stop sending oil to Havana.

By now, ballot boxes are turning up,

(PHOTO) Found in dumpster boxes of votes that Chavistas stole from the centers RT #Venezuela2013 #VenezuelaSomosTodos twitter.com/IvonneKinser/s…

— Ivonne Kinser (@IvonneKinser) April 15, 2013

@douglirodil RT @cynthia823: Por favor RT! Estan botando las cajas! Terminamos d recoger 1 en avenida en Puerto Ordaz twitter.com/Cynthia823/sta…

— ricardo colon (@Riccolon) April 15, 2013

Maduro’s acceptance speech was a double dose of crazy.

ARGENTINA
Argentina’s economy
Gaucho blues
A dollar shortage bites

Via The Argentine Post, a link I missed when it was first posted,
Argentina’s Plan for Iran

BRAZIL
Brazilian state of Acre in illegal immigration alert
The Brazilian state of Acre has declared a state of emergency after a surge of illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bolivia and Peru.

CHILE
Chile poet Pablo Neruda’s remains to be tested in US
The family of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda has agreed to send his remains to a laboratory in the United States for toxicology tests.

COLOMBIA
FARC links with Al-Qaeda?

Evidence has emerged of a link between the FARC and Islamist terrorist groups in the North African Maghreb after two Colombian nationals were arrested in Algeria last month by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Spanish intelligence services.

Colombian authorities row over Farc jail terms
Colombia’s attorney-general has said members of the rebel group Farc could escape jail terms should a peace deal be struck.

Colombia’s emerald king
Death of a tsar

COSTA RICA
Via DP, National holiday turns violent as families blocked from president’s speech
Costa Ricans outraged that they weren’t allowed to attend the annual Juan Santamaría Day festivities in an Alajuela park.

CUBA
In Spanish: Jaime Bayly entrevista al bloguero cubano Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo,

Time to Occupy Beyonce and Jay-Z

US Treasury OFAC: Send Beyoncé and Jay-Z an Anniversary Present

Rosa Maria Payá denounces death threats against her and her family.
Rosa Maria Payá holds the Cuban government responsible for whatever may happen to her and her family.

ECUADOR
Quito’s new airport
A tight fit

HONDURAS
Smoke from nearby forest fires forces 4-hour closure of airport for Honduras’ capital

JAMAICA
Puerto Rican jury rejects death sentence in police killing

MEXICO

Mexico Is Picking Up the Peso
Reforms, Search for Risk Are Boosting the Currency; ‘a Cultish Characteristic’

Mexican Proposal to Allow Foreigners to Own Coastal Property

PERU
Rural development in Peru
The Andean connection
Diminishing distance, falling poverty

PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico protects top US turtle nesting site long eyed by developers

Puerto Rico Agrees To Pay More Than $35 Million In Back Wages To Thousands Of Workers

SURINAME
Politics in Suriname
Guerrilla, rapper, gold miner…president?

URUGUAY
Uruguay president ‘sorry’ for Fernandez ‘old hag’ quip
The President of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, has apologised for apparently referring to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as an “old hag”.

Luis Alberto Lacalle, abogado y presidente de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay de 1990 a 1995 envia un afectuoso saludo a la Fundacion HACER de Washington DC desde el 25 Aniversario de la Fundacion Libertad de Rosario

VENEZUELA
Maduro and Capriles: tale of two Venezuelan presidential candidates

Venezuela’s presidential election
Voting in St Hugo’s shadow
In his search for a popular mandate, Nicolás Maduro ascribes divine powers to his predecessor but offers few earthly policies

Venezuelan blogs for their complete coverage:
Caracas chronicles
Devil’s excrement
Venezuela Nr=ews and Views

The week’s posts and podcast,
Venezuela: Maduro wins

Venezuela: two election day live feeds

A word on elected Latin American dictators

Venezuela: How important is tomorrow’s election? UPDATED

If you are in Hialeah tonight: Rosa María Payá event

OLPL en el show de Bayly

G-r-o-s-s: Bolivarian “sanitary” towels

Venezuela: Capriles Campaign Chief killed

Venezuela: The meaning of April 14 UPDATED

Cuba this morning

Venezuela: Violent deaths per 100,000

Podcast:
Talking with Silvio Canto.

El Nuevo Herald reports (link in Spanish) that Ghazi Nasr al Din, in charge of all Hezbollah operations in Venezuela, served as business attache in the Venezuelan embassy in Syria. Nicolas Maduro, now president of Venezuela, was his contact, and allegedly provided Nasr al Din’s cover.

A 2008 US Treasury report stated that Nasr al Din was a Hezbollah agent who used his post as a Venezuelan diplomat to carry out essential fundraising efforts for Hezbollah.

The Herald’s sources indicated that Nasr al Din reported directly to then-Vice-president Maduro, bypassing the minister for Middle East affairs, and arranged travel to Iran for training.

In related news, Roger Noriega, a former United States ambassador and assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, has alleged that

Iran has illegally laundered billions of dollars through the Venezuelan financial sector and is currently stashing “hundreds of millions” of dollars in “virtually every Venezuelan bank today,”

Long-term readers of this blog may recall that in 2008 Italian newspaper La Stampa exposed how Iran was using Venezuela to bypass UN sanctions.

Iran Spy Network 30,000 Strong

Iran’s intelligence service includes 30,000 people who are engaged in covert and clandestine activities that range from spying to stealing technology to terrorist bombings and assassination, according to a Pentagon report.

The report is titled Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security: A Profile, and is dated December 2012. Among the highlights,

• According to the report, Russia was active in training Iranian intelligence operations beginning in the 1990s.
• The Russian SVR spy service, the successor to the Soviet KGB, trained hundreds of MOIS operatives despite the two agencies’ different doctrines.

• Iranian activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela have raised alarm among U.S. government officials.

• The effort appears part of “Iran’s strategy of establishing a presence in the backyard of the United States for purposes of expanding Shi’a and revolutionary ideology, establishing networks for intelligence and covert operations, and waging asymmetrical warfare against the United States,” the report said.

• “In Latin America, Iran’s intelligence agencies—MOIS but mostly the Quds Force—use Hezbollah to achieve their goals.”

Read the 64-page report here.

Last week the US House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management issued a report updating its 2006 A Line in the Sand findings.

The new report (pdf file), A LINE IN THE SAND: COUNTERING CRIME,
VIOLENCE AND TERROR AT THE SOUTHWEST BORDER found (emphasis added):

 Although the United States tightened security at airports and land ports of entry in thewake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S.-Mexico border remains an obvious weak link in the chain.

 Despite the near doubling of Border Patrol personnel, the Government Accountability Office found that only 44 percent of the Southwest border was under operational control.

 In 2012, National Guard presence on the Southwest border was reduced to 300 soldiers.

 Since October 2008, 138 Customs and Border Protection officers or agents have been arrested or indicted on corruption related charges.

 The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) reports that there have been 58 incidents of shots fired at Texas lawmen by Mexican cartel operatives since 2009.

 Experts believe the Southwest border has become the great threat of terrorist infiltration into the United States.

 Iran and Hezbollah have a growing presence in Latin America.

 Hezbollah has a significant presence in the United States that could be utilized in terror attacks intended to deter U.S. efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.

 Latin America has become a money laundering and major fundraising center for Hezbollah.

 Hezbollah’s relationship with Mexican drug cartels, which control secured smuggling routes into the United States, is documented as early as 2005.

 If Iran’s assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C. had been successful, Iran’s Qods Force intended to use the Los Zetas drug cartel for other attacks in the future.

Long-term readers of my blog are certainly not surprised by this information, as I have been blogging on the subject for years. Neither would the readers of Jon Perdue’s excellent book, The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.

The Mexican government, however, strongly denies the report’s findings: Mexico disputes House GOP report alleging Iran, Hezbollah are using Mexican drug cartels

A spokesman for Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhán, told The Daily Caller his country’s government disputes a recent House GOP report alleging that Iranian and Hezbollah terror operatives are using Mexican drug cartels as a conduit to infiltrate the United States.

As Matthew Boyle points out, on October 11 last year, two men were arrested in New York and charged with taking part in an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US. You can read the full details of the plot in the Department of Justice’s report.

While its government denies these findings, Mexico is the deadliest country on earth for journalists.

Also last week, the head of Mexico’s organized crime unit stepped down on Thursday, just weeks after announcing that members of his team had been charged with having links to the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

Martin Arostegui, reporting for the Miami Herald, writes on Latin America’s school for dictators in Bolivia where the Iranians, Cuban, Russians, and Hezbollah meet the leftist governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and now, possibly, Argentina (emphasis added)

A year ago this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales inaugurated the College for Defense of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) with a speech in which he called for the expulsion of U.S. intelligence agencies, a new military doctrine based on “asymmetrical war” against “imperialism” and the “abolition” of the U.N. Security Council. He also attacked the press, calling CNN a “tool of capitalism”,
Morales spoke in the presence of Iran’s defense minister, Gen Ahmed Vahidi, who had to be rushed from the ceremony when it was learned that Argentine prosecutors were issuing an international arrest warrant over his alleged role in the 1994 Hezbollah bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

ALBA is a Venezuelan-led association of anti-U.S. governments which also includes Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and some Caribbean island states dependent on Venezuelan oil subsidies. The fledgling alliance has been given little importance by U.S. intelligence analysts, who tend to dismiss it as a purely ideological entity.

Its 5,000-square-meter military facility outside the city of Santa Cruz, built at the cost of $2 million, remains empty, according to Bolivian defense spokesmen who say that they are awaiting “input” from other member states. One Bolivian army officer ventures to say that it is on “standby,” pending the elections in Venezuela.

Despite ALBA’s vacant real estate, it is becoming increasingly clear that member governments are in the process of forming a military and intelligence network aided and influenced by Iran that could leverage events in the hemisphere, in the absence of effective U.S. leadership.

Thousands of Cuban security advisors have played a critical role in consolidating the regime of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and have similarly assisted leftist governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and now, possibly, Argentina.

A Pentagon report released in 2010 also warned about the growing presence of Iranian elite Revolutionary Guard Al Qods officers in Latin America. Small Iranian advisory teams are operating with the security services of Venezuela and other ALBA nations, according to U.S. State Department officials speaking off the record.

Bolivia’s ex-defense minister, Maria Chacón, has said that the ALBA school seeks to form leadership cadres for civilian militias. The strategy of “people in arms” has long been promoted by Fidel Castro and Chávez for the ostensible purpose of resisting a U.S. invasion.

But a more immediate role for politically directed paramilitary organizations like Venezuela’s growing Bolivarian Militia may be keeping hard-line factions in power should internal struggles result from an opposition election victory or Chávez’s much anticipated death from cancer.

A Venezuelan official blacklisted by the U.S. government as a member of Hezbollah, Ghazi Nasr Al Din, directed Circulos Bolivarianos teams that disrupted opposition rallies, in many cases shooting government opponents, prior to assuming diplomatic postings in Lebanon and Syria.

The interface between ALBA and its Middle Eastern allies is such that Cuba has used its Russian-built electronic listening station to jam satellite broadcasts by U.S.-based Iranian opposition radio stations.

Go read the whole thing.

ALBA: it’s not just for petty tyrants anymore.

UPDATE:
Hezbollah terror threat on U.S.-Mexico border is real, via American Digest.