Mexico disputes House GOP report alleging Iran, Hezbollah are using Mexican drug cart
Mexico disputes House GOP report alleging Iran, Hezbollah are using Mexican drug cartels
3:18 AM 11/20/2012
Matthew Boyle
The Daily Caller
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.
Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management released a report titled “A Line in the Sand: Countering Crime, Violence and Terror at the Southwest Border.”
The report found that the “Southwest border has now become the greatest threat of terrorist infiltration into the United States.” It specifically cited a “growing influence” from Iranian and Hezbollah terror forces in Latin America.
The Mexican government disagreed with that assessment.
“The Government of Mexico, as it has done in the past, reiterates that no such relationship or presence exists,” Ricardo Alday, a spokesman for Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, wrote in a letter to TheDC.
Alday pointed to the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism to support Mexico’s argument. “[I]n each and every one of its Country Reports on Terrorism, the US Department of State has unmistakably established that there is no such relationship.”
Alday quoted the latest such State Department report, issued on July 31 of this year.
“No known international terrorist organization had an operational presence in Mexico and no terrorist group targeted U.S. citizens in or from Mexican territory,” the State Department report reads. “There was no evidence of ties between Mexican criminal organizations and terrorist groups, nor that the criminal organizations had political or territorial control, aside from seeking to protect and expand the impunity with which they conduct their criminal activity.”
One Old Vet
Mexico disputes House report alleging cartel terrorist ties | The Daily Caller
