Thread: Cartel gun-supplier's trial begins in Arizona

Cartel gun-supplier's trial begins in Arizona


By Tim Gaynor, Reuters
11:56 a.m. March 3, 2009

PHOENIX — Jury selection began in Phoenix Tuesday in the trial of a U.S. gun dealer charged with knowingly selling hundreds of weapons to smugglers shopping for Mexican drug cartels.

Prosecutors say George Iknadosian, 47, sold AK-47 assault rifles and other guns to third-party buyers for the cartels in Mexico, where 6,000 people were killed in drug violence last year.
Iknadosian denies the charges.

Since 2006, Mexico has sent tens of thousands of troops to fight powerful cocaine cartels locked in a bloody war for control of lucrative cross-border smuggling routes to the United States.

Gun sales are illegal in Mexico. Investigators say nine out of every 10 guns recovered from Mexican crime scenes are traced back to U.S. gun dealers, prompting Mexican authorities to urge the United States to crack down on the trade.

After an 11-month effort by Mexican authorities and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to curb gunrunners, they nabbed Iknadosian.

ATF said third parties, known as “straw purchasers,â€

[quote]ATF said third parties, known as “straw purchasers,â€

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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:21 pm Post subject: Mexican drug cartels & Islamic Radicals

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MEXIDATA . INFO
Media 071408 Cartels




Monday, July 14, 2008

Mexican Drug Cartels & Islamic Radicals Working Together

By J. Jesús Esquivel, Proceso

[Translation] *

· According to a U.S. government intelligence report obtained by Proceso, Hamas, Hezbollah and other radical Islamic groups have become associates of the Mexican drug trafficking cartels: they are furnishing them weapons and helping them to distribute drugs in Europe and the Middle East. Ahead of time, DEA and Justice Department officials told this weekly that "in coming days" they will conduct an operation in the border area shared by Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay – where the radical Islamic groups have settled – that will show their ties with the Mexican drug traffickers.



Washington – Islamic terrorist groups are selling arms to Mexican drug trafficking cartels and collaborating with them in order to distribute narcotics in Europe and the Middle East.

This is one of the conclusions in the report titled "Accomplishments, Fiscal Year 2007," done by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Information from intelligence and investigations on narcoterrorism that we have carried out identifies ties between Mexican narcotics traffickers, [and] those of the Philippines and Colombia, with elements belonging to foreign organizations designated as terrorists by the [U.S.] Department of State," the NDIC document indicates. Based on information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the NDIC document emphasized: "The results of 74 investigations of narcoterrorism that have been carried out by the Special Operations Division of the DEA document that Islamic groups present on the common border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay launder money, sell arms and traffic drugs of the main Mexican criminal organizations."

Narcoterrorism

The document indicates that the majority of the Islamic groups represented in South America are tied to the Palestinians, and that they use their earnings gained from relationship with narcotics traffickers from Mexico and the rest of Latin America to finance their causes.

It identifies the groups Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as the Arab associates of narcotrafficking cartels from Mexico.

"Groups like Hezbollah and Hamas," it states, "have trafficked large amounts of heroin and cocaine in Europe and the Middle East sold to them by narcotics traffickers of Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil."

And it adds: "Furthermore, these terrorist groups have established multimillion [dollar] contracts in order to sell weapons to Mexican and Colombian narcotics traffickers," that are commercialized by "criminal providers from Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Argentina, Brazil and Bulgaria."

A NDIC official told Proceso, regarding the contents of the intelligence document: "In the last five or six years the drug cartels of Mexico have been positioned as the most powerful criminal organizations of Latin America. And since they now have an intercontinental reach in the transfer of narcotics, the Middle Eastern terrorist groups have not wanted to lose the opportunity to [make] money from them."

"There is a great deal of talk about weapons used by the main cartels of Mexico coming from the United States, but what is seldom mentioned is that many of these, seized from narcotics traffickers by Mexican authorities, are made in Europe or the Middle East and that they are the type used by Islamic groups that support the Palestinian cause," the NDIC official who asked for anonymity as his comments referred to an intelligence document that has not been declassified said.

That document notes: "A link of cooperation between Mexico's organized crime and southern Philippines area drug traffickers, and elements of the terrorist organizations Adu Sayyaf and Jamayah Islamiyah, was also identified."

The NDIC document does not identify the Mexican drug trafficking cartels related with the radical Islamic groups directly or indirectly. However, a Justice Department official consulted by this weekly said that it would deal with the Gulf, Sinaloa, [and] Arellano Félix cartels, as well as The Zetas. A DEA spokesman confirmed for Proceso that it deals with "three or four main cartels" that operate in Mexican territory.

"Right now we cannot name them (the cartels), because in coming days we will conduct an operation in South America (on the common border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) against Hezbollah due to its relationship with South American and Mexican narcotics traffickers," said the DEA spokesman who also asked for anonymity due to this being an ongoing investigation.

Words to the wise

Since the 1970s, U.S. agencies began to warn that Islamic groups established in South America were dedicated to arms trafficking in the area. However, in the past five years Mexican drug traffickers have become their main clients.

"The most notable change is that now the Islamic groups located in South America work as drug distributors in Europe and the Middle East for the Mexican narcotics traffickers. Moreover, we have information that Mexico's cartels pay [for] arms that the terrorist groups sell with drugs (heroin, methamphetamines and cocaine)," said the DEA spokesman.

On January 30, 2006, Michael Brown, chief of operations of the Federal Antidrug Agency, told the Western Hemisphere Affairs subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives that since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, federal agencies [have] intensified their investigations into the presence of Islamic terrorist groups in South America, and that as a result they discovered that they had ties with the narcotrafficking organizations in the region.

Brown explained that the Islamic groups earn large amounts from this, and he gave examples: "An investment of US$6,000.00, to buy a kilogram of cocaine from Mexican or Colombian drug traffickers, could yield a minimum profit of US$30,000.00 from the sale of this drug in Spain (…), US$110,000.00 in Hungary or Israel, and up to US$150,000.00 in Saudi Arabia."

Other intelligence documents from the Department of Justice, copies of which Proceso also obtained, show that Mexican narcotics traffickers made their first contacts with Islamic radical groups, like Hezbollah, at the beginning of this decade, this through the intermediation of Colombian, Brazilian [and] Peruvian drug dealers, as well as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

"The tripartite border (of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) is used as the central point for the trafficking of cocaine that is taken to Europe and other regions of the world. Groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are getting huge amounts of money from the drugs sold to them mainly by the Mexican narcotics dealers," according to one of the documents from the Department of Justice, dated May 9, 2006.

With respect to the weapons that the Islamic groups sell to the Mexican narcotics traffickers, the NDIC intelligence report shows that these come from the Middle East and Europe. They first arrive in South America. Subsequently, the "criminal contacts of the Islamic groups" and "their Lebanese agents" – who are found throughout the continent, but with "ample concentration in Central America" – transport them to Mexico by "air, land and sea."

"They sell them all kinds of weapons, from the most elementary to equipment to shoot down helicopters or destroy tanks (…) like those that Hezbollah or Hamas use in order to attack the Israeli Army in the Occupied Territories of Palestine or in Lebanon," the document indicates.

"We also have evidence that Central American gangs, like the Mara Salvatrucha of El Salvador, are also collaborating with the Islamic terrorist groups in the transportation of weapons and munitions that have Mexico as their final destination," stated the earlier mentioned Justice Department official. One of the documents from that U.S. government agency points out that the political atmosphere favoring leftists in South America, that tends to be at odds with the foreign policy of President George W. Bush, is exploited by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that have found a kind of refuge on the common border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, as well as a center of transnational operations both to sell arms to Mexico and to traffic in drugs to Europe and Asia. For their part, according to said document, almost inadvertently Mexican drug traffickers [are] indirectly financing terrorist acts that radical Islamic groups commit against Israel.

"The operation against Hezbollah that we will make public in coming days will offer into evidence the clear relationship that exists between narcotics trafficking and the Islamic groups, but above all it will show Latin American governments the huge current criminal potential of organized crime organizations of the region. Particularly, it will show Mexican authorities that these (Islamic) organizations are a great threat to the national security of their country, the United States, and even some South American countries," concluded the Justice Department official.

——————————

* The Proceso translation[s], from English to Spanish of information in the National Drug Intelligence Center report cited in the article (translated above into, and back into, English), take poetic license. Some of the quotes are used in altered context; others are disjointed excerpts put together with added text in an order other than that presented in the NDIC report; and some quotes tie in referenced Mexican criminal organizations whereas they do not appear in the aforementioned report.

——————————

Edited translation; from Proceso Magazine #1652, June 29, 2008, Mexico City; MexiData.info translation
http://mexidata.info/id1903.html

Looks like Mexico needs a better customs agency and border security.

There is so much corruption over there, the gun smugglers are probably escorted into the country on a red carpet.

Dixie

In this instance I believe if the proof against the gun dealer is solid he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This however does not indicate any reason to change the current gun laws there. JMO