Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Colombia: FARC’s listed assets fall short

The declared inventory included broomsticks, orange squeezers, mugs, talcum powder, dentistry equipment and industrial tools, but The FARC’s Riches: List of Assets Fails to Reveal Guerrillas’ Total Wealth.

InSight Crime reports, that, for instance,

Much of the real estate listed by the FARC, which amounts to around half of all its assets, lacks any official registration, “which frankly makes it useless and inadmissible” to the inventory, Martínez wrote. As the ownership of these properties cannot be legally identified, the Attorney General’s Office has stated that “for now, none of the FARC’s real estate is immune to being seized” by authorities.

In the inventory, the FARC also “accepted as [their] own” any assets that state prosecutors may have uncovered in their investigations into the rebel group, without actually identifying these themselves. Authorities have already started seizing FARC assets worth nearly $580 million dollars, according to Martínez’s letter.

The term smoke screen comes to mind.

Looks like the Colombian authorities could use several independent forensic accountants: Estimates published by The Economist in 2016 suggested that the FARC’s total assets could surpass $11 billion, but the list only declared some $332 million (Datawrapper version of the summarized inventory here).

If you go by the inventory, the FARC has a measly US$450,000 cash on hand.

Walter White would put them to shame.

The FARC will be laughing all the way to the bank while the Colombian government spends $39+ billion pesos (US$13+ million) to finance the FARC’s political party.

But don’t worry; Santos gets to keep his Nobel Prize.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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CNN finally reports on Venezuela’s passports-for-terrorists scheme

I posted in 2015: Venezuela issuing passports, voter registrations, to Hezbollah & Syrians

In 2013: Hezbollah agent issued Venezuelan diplomatic passport.

I can spend all day linking to my prior posts on this topic.

Finally, after all these years, CNN investigates: Venezuela may have given passports to people with ties to terrorism

One confidential intelligence document obtained by CNN links Venezuela’s new Vice President Tareck El Aissami to 173 Venezuelan passports and ID’s that were issued to individuals from the Middle East, including people connected to the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Yes, I posted about El Aissami’s role in 2013.

But back to CNN

The accusation that the country was issuing passports to people who are not Venezuelan first surfaced in the early 2000s when Hugo Chavez was the country’s president, interviews and records show.
A Venezuelan passport permits entry into more than 130 countries without a visa, including 26 countries in the European Union, according to a ranking by Henley and Partners. A visa is required to enter the United States.

Glad to see CNN is finally starting to pay attention.

UPDATE
Linked to by Pirate’s Cove. Thank you!

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Chile: Evidence of terrorist arson? Guess who may be involved

Mary O’Grady writes on Fire and Terrorism in Chile. Setting churches and forests afire is the modus operandi of guerrillas in the south.

More than one million acres in the center and south of Chile have gone up in flames since July 2016, with almost 70% of the destruction occurring last month. The affected area is larger than the state of Rhode Island. At least 11 people have died and more than 1,000 homes have been destroyed.

There is now evidence that

Some fires have been intentionally set and this has elevated concerns in rural Chile about the rise in organized violence against civilians and private property by left-wing extremists aiming to topple the democracy. Ms. Bachelet was warned about the threat during her first term (2006-10), as was former President Sebastian Piñera (2010-14). Neither acted.

O’Grady writes that “left-wing extremist groups—claiming to represent the indigenous Mapuche” in La Auraucanía, Los Ríos and Bío Bío have been linked in the past to not only the Chilean Communist Party, but also to – surprise! – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

As you may recall from my prior post, Brazil’s largest criminal organization, the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital – First Capital Command) is recruiting Colombian FARC members.

InSight Crime reports,

Colombia’s peace agreement with the FARC grants the guerrillas 10 congressional seats in 2018, but their transition from illegal armed group to political movement will most likely be concentrated in local positions in their traditional areas of influence.

In plain English, that means that the FARC is well on its road to becoming a political power in Colombia . . . while its members branch out into criminal and terrorist activities throughout the hemisphere.

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Brazil: PCC hiring FARC

The stuff gets real: Brazil’s largest criminal organization, the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital – First Capital Command) is recruiting Colombian FARC members (emphasis added),

as it seeks heavy-weapons and other expertise to help expand its hold over Latin America’s drug trade, investigators and officials in both countries say.

Defense and foreign ministry officials from both nations are scheduled to meet Tuesday in the city of Manaus in the Amazon region to share information on how the Brazilian criminal organization, the First Capital Command or PCC, is working to hire guerrillas in Colombia, some of whom opted not to participate in peace talks in that country. Colombia’s government last year signed a peace pact with the Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and most of its 6,000 fighters are now preparing to disarm.

The PCC wants to fight the Brazilian military, wipe out competition from other gangs, and deal directly with Colombian cocaine suppliers – whose coca production surged by 46% from 2014 to 2015.

The gang is seeking .50-caliber machine guns, which are capable of taking down helicopters and perforating bulletproof cars, as well as to enlist parts of the FARC’s network of seasoned fighters and expert bomb makers

Additionally, InSight Crime reports that the PCC is using Uruguay as a transit point for international drug trafficking operations in Africa and Europe, and operating in Paraguay and Bolivia. InSight Crime has noted that

PCC is capable of organizing drug trafficking operations and sending drug shipments abroad, as well as controlling shipments of marijuana and cocaine in both national and regional markets.

Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta mafia (which handles up to 80 percent of Italy-bound cocaine) is one of the PCC’s European partners.

Last week the Colombian government and the FARC announced a joint plan to fight against coca production.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Mexican woman arrested in Spain for inciting ISIS jihad

El País reports:
Mexican woman arrested in Madrid on terrorism charges. The detainee is said to be a “very important” figure in radical circles in her home country

Say again?
“The detainee is said to be a “very important” figure in radical circles in her home country”

Spanish authorities have accused the woman of glorifying terrorism and believe she was a part of a “stable structure” dedicated to the diffusion of extremely violent jihadist propaganda “using a range of online platforms and instant-messaging services,” Spain’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.

EN ESPAÑOL
Una mexicana, detenida en Madrid por enaltecer el terrorismo yihadista
Spanish authorities have accused the woman of glorifying terrorism and believe she was a part of a “stable structure” dedicated to the diffusion of extremely violent jihadist propaganda “using a range of online platforms and instant-messaging services,” Spain’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The detainee had already converted to Islam in 2010 before moving move to Spain, according to the Civil Guard. On her arrival in this country, she married a Muslim and began to spread radical messages.

“She managed to become one of the most important figures among women in the Islamic community in the country of her birth,” sources say, promoting female jihadism and sharing propaganda material with a wide range of contacts. [emphasis added]

The woman remains unnamed.

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“Venezuela looks like a failed economy. In fact, it’s Iran’s frontier in the Americas”

While the media was only broadcasting stories about the women’s march, the grownups were paying attention to serious matters. John Batchelor’s January 21, 2016 (emphasis added):
Venezuela Falls to Iran & What is to be done?

Facing a parliamentary vote to oust him and a call for new elections, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 4 replaced Vice President Aristóbulo Istúriz with regime loyalist Tareck El Aissami, the governor of Aragua State. El Aissami’s appointment comes at a critical time for the embattled Bolivarian regime. Venezuela’s economy is spiraling into chaos under the crushing weight of triple-digit inflation, basic commodities shortages, widespread corruption and violent crime. Maduro is relying on El Aissami to tighten the regime’s grip on power. As it turns out, that is in no small part thanks to his Iran and Hezbollah connections. Brig. Gen. Mohammad-Reza Naqdi, the new cultural adviser to the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief commander and a former chief of the IRGC’s Basij militia, recently announced that a Latin American team visited Iran to learn how to form a Basij-like mobilization force, praising “Iran’s perseverance and success.” – See more at:
• Meet Venezuela’s new VP, fan of Iran and Hezbollah
• Should Boeing and Airbus sell planes to Iran Air?

Listen to the full podcast:

Batchelor concludes with, “Venezuela looks like a failed economy. In fact, it’s Iran’s frontier in the Americas”.

You can’t say you haven’t been told.

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Ft. Lauderdale shooting: The Puerto Rican jihadist?

Judicial Watch reports that Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooter Esteban Santiago Converted to Islam, Identified as Aashiq Hammad Years Before Joining Army

The Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooter is a Muslim convert who years before joining the U.S. Army took on an Islamic name (Aashiq Hammad), downloaded terrorist propaganda and recorded Islamic religious music online, according to public records dug up by the investigative news site of an award-winning, California journalist. This is pertinent information that the Obama administration apparently wants to keep quiet, bringing up memories of the Benghazi cover up, in which the president and his cohorts knowingly lied to conceal that Islamic terrorists attacked the U.S. Special Mission in Libya.

Information is slowly trickling out that links the Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooter to radical Islam while the official story from authorities is that the gunman is a mentally ill, Hispanic Army veteran named Esteban Santiago that became unhinged after a tour in Iraq. Only one mainstream media outlet mentions the possibility of Santiago’s “jihadist identity,” burying it in a piece about New York possibly being his initial target. A paragraph deep in the story mentions that investigators recovered Santiago’s computer from a pawn shop and the FBI is examining it to determine whether he created a “jihadist identity for himself using the name Aashiq Hammad…” The rest of the traditional mainstream media coverage promotes the government rhetoric that omits any ties to terrorism even though early on a photo surfaced of Santiago making an ISIS salute while wearing a keffiyeh, a Palestinian Arab scarf.

The public records uncovered in the days after the massacre suggest Santiago (Hammad) is a radical Islamic terrorist that’s seriously committed to Islam. Besides taking on a Muslim name, he recorded three Islamic religious songs, including the Muslim declaration faith (“there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger”) known as the Shahada. He also posted a thread about downloading propaganda videos from Islamic terrorists on a weapons and explosives forum. The investigative news site that unearthed this disturbing information connected the dots between Santiago, who is of Puerto Rican descent, and Hammad, an identity he created in 2007.

The Miami Herald, however, denies it,

Suggestions of Santiago’s possible connection to Jihadists stem in part from the gunman’s visit to an FBI office in Anchorage two months ago. Authorities said Santiago, who was agitated and incoherent, claimed that he was hearing voices urging him to join ISIS and that the CIA was pressuring him to watch terrorist training videos.

Yet federal agents, who have examined Santiago’s computer, have not uncovered any tangible evidence that Santiago heeded the voices he claimed he heard.

Sources also pointed out that Santiago did not follow the pattern of other ISIS-inspired terrorists by proclaiming support of the terrorist group as other “lone wolf” radicals have done — among them, Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last year.

Despite Santiago’s rambling statement to the FBI in November, he was not placed on any federal “no-fly” lists, and following his brief stint in a psychiatric facility, his gun, which had been taken away after the FBI visit, was returned to him.

Either way, Santiago/Hammad killed five and shot six others. Dozens more were injured during the airport evacuation.

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Uruguay: Jihad Diyab’s back

Let’s hope Gitmo alumnus Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a.k.a. Jihad Ahmad Diyab, a.k.a. Abu Wael Dihab, a.k.a. Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Diyab, a.k.a. Jihad Diyab has a frequent-flyer card by now.

The last time we looked, he was on his way back from Venezuela, where he had turned up at Uruguay’s consulate in Caracas and asked for assistance to fly to Turkey or some other country. His family is in Turkey, and refuse to go to Uruguay.

Turkey doesn’t want him.

Back then I posted,

A known terrorist, who supposedly needs crutches to get around, goes missing for several weeks, to eventually turn up some 4,600 miles away from Montevideo (a little under the distance from New York to Moscow), in Venezuela, of all places, just so he can petition the Uruguayan consulate – which he could do in Montevideo – to “ask for assistance to fly to Turkey or some other country to be reunited with his family.”

After his return, he went on an extended hunger strike, following which he was flown to South Africa (I assume at Uruguayan taxpayers’ expense).

As it turns out, South Africa doesn’t want him either:

Former Guantanamo detainee Jihad Diyab is returning to Uruguay this weekend after being denied entry to South Africa, according to Christian Mirza, a former refugee mediator for the Uruguayan government.

As you may recall, the former member of the “Syrian Group”, which was “comprised of dismantled terrorist cells that escaped Syrian authorities and fled to Afghanistan (AF) in 2000,” was released by the Obama administration from Guantanamo and sent to Uruguay. He went to Argentina last February, and declared himself  “ready to fight“, just the thing when you want to make yourself welcome to a foreign country and your first name is Jihad.

After that, Diyab tried to enter Brazil three times but was turned away at the border. Authorities lost track of him, he turned up in Venezuela, was returned to Uruguay where he went on hunger strike, and now this.

Anyone running a pool on where he’ll turn up next?



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