The links of Hugo Chavez with international terrorism. The Noriega effect.

A report by Martin Arostegui, in the Tuesday, March 9, 2010, edition of the Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/09/venezuela-linked-to-terror-groups//print/) gives a detailed account on the links between the dictatorial regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the terrorist groups of ETA, Spain and FARC, Colombia. The accusation has been made by Spanish judicial authorities that Chavez’s regime aided the terrorist groups above mentioned by allowing them to train terrorists in Venezuelan territory and in plotting the assassination of Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe and former President Andres Pastrana, as well as other Colombian politicians. The report mentions a Chavez’s protégée, Mr. Arturo Cubillan Fontan, as ETA’s leader in Venezuela. Mr. Cubillan and his wife are high-level bureaucrats in the Chavez government.
The report made public by the Spanish authorities describes a 20-day training course on weapons and explosives given at a jungle hideout, in Venezuelan soil. Irish IRA terrorists arrested in Colombia in 2001, says the report, also traveled to Venezuela in more than one occasion.
More than 100 e-mails linking Chavez with the FARC were recovered from Raul Reyes laptops. Reyes was the FARC second-in command, killed in Ecuador by the Colombian Army two years ago.
The multiplicity of links leaves little doubt about the complicity of Chavez’s regime in the promotion of terrorist activities in Latin America. Now the ball is in the U.S. court.