This
is a partial compilation of information on the role Venezuela has been playing
in the promotion of, and assistance to, global terrorism.
1.
The
Venezuelan embassy in Iraq
In an investigation made by Andreina
Flores, see: http://periodistainternacional.com/2015/11/24/diplomatico-venezolano-denuncia-emision-de-documentos-para-terroristas-de-medio-oriente/ and
a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e40yE3jBg4&feature=youtu.be you can read, see and hear Misael Lopez, a
Venezuelan lawyer, 40 years old, who was employed in the Venezuelan embassy in
Iraq in 2013, talking about the situation in that embassy. He witnessed illegal
events at the embassy, essentially the emission of false Venezuelan documents
such as birth certificates, identity cards and passports to Syrian,
Palestinian, Iraqi and Pakistani nationals. The embassy employees charged these
persons between $5-15,000 to provide them with those documents without any
selection process and under the approving eyes of the diplomatic authorities of
the Venezuelan embassy. According to Lopez some of these documents were given
to persons linked to Hezbollah. In particular the translator at the embassy, a
Mrs. Sanna Kamal Al Shikhli, was denounced by Lopez for the illegal utilization
of security material from the embassy such as seals, printed official paper and
formats, in order to provide foreign with false birth certificates. This
accusation was presented to the Venezuelan Ambassador Jonathan Velasco, March
29, 2014, documented with photographs: View this document on
Scribd .
The employee had offered Lopez to share in the “business”,
mentioning 12 Syrian national willing to pay $12,000 for each Venezuelan
passport. Lopez refused the offer and presented his charges. The employee was
fired and received a $25,000 severance bonus.
However, she is again working for the Venezuelan embassy, in Amman,
Jordan. Ambassador Velasco did not pay any attention to Lopez charges and did
not transmit the event to his superiors in Venezuela. In fact, Lopez was fired
in August 2015 and claims to have received death threats from unknown persons
but also from Ambassador Velasco himself. A local employee at the embassy, Aryan
Abdulmalek Noorildeen, was murdered only hours after the departure of Lopez
from Iraq.
Lopez says he was tired of seeing how Venezuela facilitated
the free transit of terrorists from the Middle East to the western hemisphere
by providing them with false documentation. He became a whistle blower, he
says, because there was no action on the part of the Venezuelan authorities.
Speculating on how many foreign nationals from Iraq, Palestine and Syria have
had access to false Venezuelan documents he says: 50,000 (I find this number
difficult to believe).
The investigation by Andreina Flores extended to the
Venezuelan Ambassador, Jonathan Velasco. He said that Misael Lopez did work in
the Embassy but he denied any wrongdoing in the offices of the embassy. He said
that the emission of documents of this type to foreign nationals can only be
done in Venezuela, cannot be done in an embassy. And he put the files of the
embassy at the disposal of the newspapermen.
2.
A Venezuelan terrorist detained in London
A man called Hazil Muhamad Rahaman Alan ,40
years old, was detained in Gatwick Airport, London in 2003, with a hand grenade, trying
to travel. He was interrogated by Scotland Yard, in the Paddington Green
Station Paddington Green. recently it was confirmed that this man a Venezuelan national, listed in the Venezuelan Electoral Registry and
had voted in Venezuela, in Turmero, Aragua State.
3.
Chavez promoted terrorist organizations
since 2002
In the early 21st
century Venezuelan strongman
Hugo Chavez’ regime was already enabling Islamic terrorist organizations to
take root in South America. In December 2002 freelance journalist Martin
Arostegui published an article in Insight Magazine (“Chavez plans for a
terrorist regime”) in which he reported the arrival in Venezuela of Hakim Mamad
Ali Diab Fattah, a member of Hezbollah. Venezuelan officials received him at
the airport. In connection with his presence in the country Arostegui
interviewed the former Venezuelan Intelligence Director, General Marcos
Ferreira, who said Fattah represented only the tip of the iceberg in a
Cuban-Venezuelan operation to promote the infiltration of terrorists from Hezbollah
into the U.S. Between 200 and 300 Cuban intelligence, he added, were already
active in this project within Chavez inner circle, led by Cuban Captain Sergio
Cardona. Ferreira also identified Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, the current Minister
of the Interior of Chavez, as Chavez’s designated link with the terrorists. In 2005, Barbara Newman reported that the
Venezuelan Island of Margarita had become a main center of financing for Hezbollah
in Latin America and that members of this organization were entering the U.S.
with Venezuelan documents obtained in that island. In 2006 I reported on the
installation by Hezbollah of small cells in the Venezuelan side of the Guajira
Peninsula, bordering with Colombia. (Gateway Pundit, September 1, 2006). Also
in 2006, a report by a U.S House of Representatives sub-committee led by Texas
Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) asserted that the government of Hugo
Chavez was providing support to terrorists, including false identity documents
that “could prove useful to radical Islamic groups”. Venezuela, the report
added, “is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere,
providing assistance to the Islamic radicals from the Middle East”.
4.
Training
of Venezuelans in Lebanon
In 2008 a fresh wave of detailed information
about the links between Hugo Chavez and Hezbollah emerged. Writing for Caracas
newspaper “El Nuevo Pais”, Venezuelan exiled journalist Patricia Poleo published two articles (June 13 and June 20,
2008) in which she describes how Hezbollah in Lebanon was training young
Venezuelans in the use of firearms and explosives. “The young Venezuelans”, she
says, “are members of Chavez’s political party PSUV, and are recruited by,
among others, Tarek el Aissami, current Venezuelan Vice-Minister of the
Interior and by Gahzi Nasr Al Din, at the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus, Syria
[later moved to the Venezuelan embassy in Lebanon]”. Poleo says that, after the
Venezuelans trained in Lebanon returned to their country, they linked with
radical groups of their same party and of the Bolivarian University. These
groups, Poleo adds, are closely connected with Hezbollah in Venezuela and with
Iraqi Al-Qaeda members living in Venezuela, as well as with the Venezuelan
chapter of the Palestinian Democratic Front, led by Salid Ahmed Rahman, who has
his office in downtown Caracas. Poleo says that there are ten or more training
camps of Hezbollah in Venezuela. She identified one of the most notorious
members of Hezbollah in Venezuela as explosives expert Abdul Ghani Suleiman
Wanked, who is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s right hand.
Her second article provided specific information
about the connections of Hezbollah terrorists with the Chavez regime. Poleo
said that a key man behind this activity was Raymundo Kabchi, a Lebanese born
lawyer with Venezuelan nationality. Mr. Kabchi was an “advisor” to the
Venezuelan Foreign Minister for some years and is the person who recommended
Nasr Al Din for his job at the Venezuelan embassy in Damascus, Syria.
The U.S. government moved against some
Venezuelan members of Hezbollah. In June 20, 2008 the Treasury Department designated as
terrorists two Venezuelan supporters of Hezbollah,
Ghazi Nasr Al Din, the same person mentioned by Poleo in her articles, and
Fawzi Kan’an, along with two travel agencies owned and operated by Kan’an. This
designation was taken pursuant to Executive Order 13224, which targets
terrorists, those acting on their behalf or those providing them with financial,
technological or material support. The assets of these two persons in the U.S.
have been frozen. In their designation the Treasury Department asserts that
Nasr Al Din has facilitated the travel of Lebanese Hezbollah representatives to
Venezuela to ask for financial support. Kan’an is also identified as a major
financial supporter of Hezbollah.
5.
FROM the World Almanac of Islamism, 2014
· There was a
special relationship between the Venezuelan government and Hezbollah. Venezuela
provided political, diplomatic, material and logistical support to Hezbollah.
As in most of Latin America, Hezbollah, Iran’s chief terrorist organization, is
the primary Islamist force in Venezuela. Capitalizing on the network of
enterprising Lebanese Shi’a merchants throughout the country’s larger cities,
the group uses the South American country for fundraising and various forms of
money-laundering, smuggling, and fraud. The basic model is said to be a simple
“pay to play” system, in which Lebanese Shi’a merchants are persuaded by
Hezbollah agents and financiers, through varying degrees of coercion, to
“tithe” to Hezbollah.
· Most worrisome, however, is the network of
underworld connections that Hezbollah is building throughout the hemisphere
from its base in Venezuela. According to former Assistant Secretary of State
for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega, Hezbollah operatives were
collaborating with sophisticated and high level drug-smugglers and guerrillas
in the region. Walid Makled Garcia’s “Lebanese Cartel” (Cartel Libanés) and
Ayman Jouma’s cocaine smuggling and money-laundering scheme are two examples
Noriega cited in recent testimony to the U.S. Congress of prominent
narco-traffickers wanted by U.S. law enforcement whose organizations provide
funding for Hezbollah. Makled is now in prison in Venezuela since Colombia
refused to send him to the U.S., where he would have been an invaluable
witness.
· There are more
than 100,000 Muslims in Venezuela, primarily of Lebanese and Syrian descent,
and concentrated in Margarita Island and Caracas. While Margarita Island’s
Muslim population is almost entirely Lebanese Shi’a, there are Sunni Muslims
elsewhere in the country, and Caracas has a largely Sunni population of 15,000
which is served by the largest mosque in Latin America, built by the Saudis as
a sister mosque to the Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ibrahim mosque in Gibraltar. There are
other mosques in major cities of Maracaibo, Valencia, Vargas, Punto Fijo, and
Bolivar. Local cable television outlets in Margarita carry Al-Jazeera and the
Lebanese Hezbollah outlet LBC, while on the mainland the Saudi Channel is
available via satellite as well.
· The picture of
Islamism and society in Venezuela resembles that of much of Latin America. This
is to say that while there is a vague anti-globalist sense that pervades
society, actual friendship with Islamist aims is at the political and not the
religious level.
· Ever since Hugo
Chavez took his first trip to Iran in 2001, upgraded relations with the Islamic
Republic have become a cardinal tenet of Venezuelan foreign policy. In October
2010, Chavez announced an initial study of nuclear capacity for his country, a
move analysts believe could be largely one of cover for Iran’s program which
Venezuela has been supporting for several years. Earlier, in November 2008,
Iranian and Venezuelan officials signed a secret “science and technology”
agreement formalizing cooperation “in the field of nuclear technology.” As part
of that outreach, Iranian Minister of Science, Research and Technology Mohammad-Mehdi
Zahedi led a delegation to hold talks with Venezuelan high-ranking officials in
Caracas. .. During the visit, Chavez promised to provide the Islamic Republic
with 20,000 barrels of petrol a day, despite the sanctions on Iran’s economy
being contemplated by much of the responsible world and in spite of Venezuela’s
own problems in supplying its domestic markets with fuel. Subsequently, a
whirlwind visit to Iran by Chavez in September 2009 yielded a new deal on
nuclear cooperation. The agreement was an addition to a rapidly growing list of
bilateral pacts between Caracas and Tehran. Venezuela announced the agreement
to purchase Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Iran in 2007. U.S. State
Department cables, published by WikiLeaks, reveal an Iranian shipment of
Mohajer-2 unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of UNSC 1747 bound for
Venezuela sometime before May 2009.15 Despite U.S. sanctions, in November 2011,
the first Mohajer was spotted at El Libertador airbase in Ochoa. In the summer
of 2012, a Spanish news source, ABC.es, broke a story about U.S. investigations
into the program and Chavez admitted and shared pictures of the UAVs, according
to a Reuters report. But this drone cooperation, troubling enough in itself,
may mask still more troubling cooperation. Speculation, as yet uncorroborated,
exists that Venezuela and Iran have signed an agreement to construct a joint
missile base in Venezuela and co-develop ballistic missilesThe joint ventures
erected between Caracas and Tehran, and the purchase of Venezuelan enterprises,
allow Iran to do business with U.S. companies and even within the United States
itself. Because of the direct connection between Caracas and Tehran, efforts to
contain trade with Iran are futile without cutting off the billions of dollars
of legitimate U.S. trade with Venezuela, according to Manhattan District
Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
· These ties,
moreover, have expanded in recent years; in April 2009, the two countries
launched a bi-national bank with $200 million of initial capital—with each
country contributing half— and a final goal of $1.2 billion.19 The bank is
supposed to finance projects of mutual benefit to the two countries. Based in
Venezuela, it will offer a convenient channel for Iran to sidestep U.S.-led
sanctions along with the several branches of Iran’s Saderat Bank already open
there.20 During Iran’s 2009 elections, Chavez offered “total solidarity” to
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, equating attacks on him as an assault by
“global capitalism,” and condoned the
brutal tactics of Iran’s domestic militia, the basij, in their crackdown on
opposition protesters.
· Iran reciprocated these friendly feelings.
When he decorated Hugo Chávez with the Higher Medal of the Islamic Republic of
Iran in 2008, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Chávez “my brother… a friend of the
Iranian nation and the people seeking freedom around the world. He works
perpetually against the dominant system. He is a worker of God and servant of
the people.” Ahmadinejad even risked a
public embrace of Chavez’s grieving mother at the caudillo’s funeral, a move which
scandalized the mullahs back home.
6.
The role of Tareck El Aissami, see:
In his superb
profile of Tareck El Aissami Alek Boyd says: “The
most interesting aspect of El Aissami's operation is not money laundering by
his proxies, but rather abuse of his station at ONIDEX to give Venezuelan IDs
to a number of internationally wanted criminals / terrorists. The news from
OFAC linked above reveal that Hezbollah operatives in South America got
Venezuelan IDs under El Aissami's "watch". While in charge,
ONIDEX created new identities for a number of people. Intelligence
reports sent to us claim that as many as 173 individuals believed to be
collaborating with terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering were either
naturalized, or got Venezuelan visas and IDs using fake names. Abbas
Hussein HARB, for instance, identified by OFAC as part of a money laundering
network related to Hezbollah and Ayman Saied JOUMAA, has two Venezuelan
IDs (21495203 and 26405022). As of this writing both are
valid. Kassem Mohamad SALEH, also designated as Hezbollah
collaborator, has a valid Venezuelan ID (22075502), as shown in electoral
records.
7. The
recommendations of Heritage Foundation about Venezuelan terrorism
In his 2010 paper “What the U.S. Should Do” Ray Walser lists some specific
recommendations:
·
Add Venezuela to the State Sponsors of Terrorism List”.
He says: “Congress should pass a resolution calling for placing Venezuela
on the state sponsors of terrorism list and the Obama Administration should
promptly proceed with adding Venezuela to the list. While largely symbolic
because of existing restrictions on arms sales and technology transfers, it
would give the U.S. greater authority to monitor U.S. financial transactions
with Venezuela. The U.S. should make sure that the full rigor of the law is
applied to Venezuela's commerce and trade in order to prevent Venezuela from
acting as a front for Iran or other terrorism-friendly regimes.
· Launch a Real Public Diplomacy Effort Against
Chávez.
The U.S.
is losing the battle against massive disinformation spawned by Chavez. If the
Obama Administration wishes to preserve the security of the hemisphere, it must
move to more proactive rebuttals with skilled public affairs efforts. Take the
U.S. embassy's Web site in Caracas, http://caracas.usembassy.gov, which fails to post any
information that challenges the outlandish assertions made by Chávez regarding
U.S. policy in places like Colombia. In brief, the Obama Administration needs
to develop an informational campaign to counter Chavista disinformation.
·
Enhance U.S. Capacity Building to Counter Terrorism and Drug
Trafficking in the Americas.
The threat posed by Chávez and his
allies is far from overt. It lies in the asymmetrical contest that pits the
lesser accumulation of threats, such as drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and
money laundering, to erode U.S. power and influence. The U.S. must do a better
job of collecting, analyzing, and distributing intelligence regarding Chávez
and the active threat posed by traditional terrorism and narcoterrorism in the
Americas. It should use available intelligence platforms, such as the Joint
Interagency Task Force South (JITF-South) at Key West and the new observation
locations in Colombia, to monitor Venezuelan support for narcoterrorism and
criminal activity.
·
Improve Security for Friends.
The Administration should
make clear its commitment to supporting and defending friends, such as
Colombia, from overt aggression and intimidation by Venezuelan military forces
or indirect aggression through Venezuelan support for the FARC. Beyond the
recent Defense Cooperation Agreement, the U.S. should be prepared to give
Colombia a guarantee of political and, if necessary, military support against a
threat of unprovoked attack by Chávez and the Venezuelan military. This will
help moderate Colombian anxieties and silence those who are beginning to
question U.S. readiness to help Colombia resist Chávez's bullying. Congress
should cement the relationship with Colombia by passing long-delayed Free Trade
Agreements with Colombia and Panama.
8. The Argentina – Venezuela connection.
The elections in Argentina and the upcoming legislative elections in Venezuela will have a strong impact on the influence of Muslim terrorism in these two countries and, by extension in the region. In the case of Argentina,
see: http://latinamericagoesglobal.org/2015/11/what-does-macris-election-in-argentina-mean-for-the-region/
Dr. Evan Ellis says:
"While not all terrorist
groups are Islamic, Argentina has the largest Muslim community in the region
after Brazil, and many of the Islamic terrorist cells uncovered in the region
have had ties to Argentina, including Mosheen Rabani, the Iranian diplomat
accredited in Buenos Aires, who reportedly worked from his base in the country
to recruit terrorists in other Latin American countries, such as Abdul Kadir,
who reportedly developed a plan in 2007 to blow up New York’s John F. Kennedy
airport.
For its part,
the Argentine government has long sought justice and clarification regarding
the 1992 and 1994 attacks against Jewish targets in the greater Buenos Aires
area, and probably would welcome U.S. technical assistance and resources as it
continues its efforts to get to the bottom of the case. Indeed, as recently as
October 2015, Argentina experienced an elevated alert when one of its
consulates received a report of a possible attack by terrorists of Malian
ethnicity against a major shopping mall".
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