Hugo sells one down the river, along with 48 others.
The report has a number of interesting things:
- a huge reward ($5 million) on his head – the other FARC terrorists who died last week were turned in because of huge rewards
- Fatty was smuggling weapons from Europe to Colombia via Venezuela, in addition to running the Guajira Cartel in Colombia, to support the FARC
- Chavez says Fatty’s Venezuelan but apparently Fatty’s Colombian (would a Venezuelan be able to run a Colombian drug cartel? Not very likely.) He was born in Maicao, Colombia, and is a Colombian citizen.
- Fatty was arrested by Venezuelan authorities.
Venezuela nabs suspected Colombian cocaine kingpin
Venezuelan authorities have arrested a suspected drug lord and arms smuggler with paramilitary links wanted in the United States on charges of trafficking cocaine, the government said on Sunday.
Police arrested Hermagoras Gonzalez close to the border with Colombia on Saturday, Venezuelan media reported. State television said 48 people it called paramilitary fighters had also been caught in the operation.
The U.S. State Department has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect, known as “Fatty Gonzalez.” It accuses him of smuggling large quantities of cocaine into the United States.
The State Department says Gonzalez ran the Guajira cartel in Colombia and also smuggled arms from Europe through Venezuela to support a paramilitary group fighting Marxist guerrillas in Colombia.
The LA Times has more on the Venezuelan connection:
The Colombian has been identified as the head of the so-called Guajira cartel, named for the desolate peninsula that forms Venezuela’s northwestern boundary. The cartel controls as much as one-third of the 250 tons of cocaine that annually passes through Venezuela on the way to U.S. and European markets, authorities say.
That passage is said to be facilitated by the so-called Cartel of the Sun, a group of corrupt Venezuelan army and police officials named for the solar insignia on the uniforms of the Venezuelan national guard. Gonzalez’s Guajira cartel is said to be closely associated with the guard.
For now, at least, Fatty will be tried in Venezuela.
I’m sure there’ll be more on this story later on.
