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Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organization has become increasingly reliant on organized crime, including cocaine smuggling, human trafficking and kidnapping, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in Manhattan's federal court. The charges filed against three alleged al-Qaeda associates by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan is the latest chilling evidence of a convergence between terrorism and organized crime. Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman were snatched in Ghana on Wednesday by a Drug Enforcement Administration sting and shipped to New York, where they arrived on Friday to face charges of conspiracy to commit acts of narco-terrorism and providing material support...

Firefights in Matamoros Violence associated with organized crime and the drug trade continues throughout Mexico, with the number of homicides so far this year reaching almost 5,000. For comparison, the 5,700 organized crime-related killings in 2008 made that year the deadliest yet in the country’s cartel war. With nearly four months left in 2009, it is all but inevitable that 2009 will be another record year for violence. One particularly noteworthy incident from this past week occurred on the afternoon of Sept. 4 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. The incident began after Mexican authorities...

He calls himself "Cesar," but his real name is Gerardo Aguilar Ramirez. As "comandante" of the 1st Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- and one of the top 10 leaders of the hyperviolent FARC -- he has well-earned credentials as a drug-dealing terrorist with a penchant for trading in hostages. On Thursday, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents put Cesar in shackles, marched him aboard an aircraft here in Bogota and took him to the United States to stand trial for his crimes. Our Fox News' "War Stories" team was here to record the event -- and a...

BOGOTA — He calls himself "Cesar," but his real name is Gerardo Aguilar Ramirez. As "comandante" of the 1st Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — and one of the top 10 leaders of the hyper-violent FARC — he has well-earned credentials as a drug-dealing terrorist with a penchant for trading in hostages. This Thursday, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents put Ramirez, aka Cesar, in shackles, marched him aboard an aircraft here in Bogota, and took him to the U.S. to stand trial for his crimes. Our Fox News' "War Stories" team was here to record the event...

WASHINGTON, June 26, 2009 – Afghan and coalition forces detained several suspected Taliban militants overnight during an operation designed to disrupt Taliban bombing and rocket attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. In the province’s Nad Ali district, a combined force patrolled near the village of Marjeh, to compounds where intelligence sources reported a known Taliban commander was located. While clearing the compounds, the force encountered a threat. Officials did not provide details of the threat, but said it was “eliminated” after several escalation-of-force measures. The force completed the search without further incident, detained a handful of...

Mystery continues to surround Hezbollah’s alleged links to the seventeen suspects arrested on drug trafficking charges on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao on April 28. According to Curacaon authorities, approximately 250 law enforcement officials took down a major drug trafficking and money laundering ring led by a criminal network that shipped and sold cocaine and other contraband from Latin America and the Caribbean to Europe and the Middle East. In a significant twist, Curacaon authorities announced that the suspects had ties to international organized crime networks linked to Hezbollah in Lebanon; the suspects are accused of, among other things,...

Drug cartel members are using a variety of fronts and subterfuges - from fake tamale stands to child decoys - to gather intelligence about enhanced U.S. border security and exploit weaknesses to send in people and drugs, according to a new report obtained by The Washington Times. The findings, by the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group, underline the growing threat to U.S. security from a porous border. Mexican drug cartels continue to probe for gaps in border defenses while fighting one another and Mexican authorities in a violent conflict that has killed more than 7,000 people in Mexico since the...

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The body of a U.S. marshal has been discovered in Juarez, Mexico, according to the U.S. Marshals Service -- the latest discovery in a wave of violence that has gripped towns along the U.S.-Mexican border in recent months. The body of Deputy Marshal Vincent Bustamante -- who was the subject of an arrest warrant accusing him of criminal theft of government property -- was found in Juarez on Wednesday, said Marshals Service spokesman Jeff Carter. Chihuahua state police said the body had multiple wounds to the head -- apparently consistent with an execution-style shooting, according to Edgar Roman, a reporter...

(CNN) -- The United States shares the blame for Mexican drug trafficking and the attendant violence that has killed thousands in the past year alone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday. "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she said en route to Mexico City, according to pool reports. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians. So, yes, I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility." Clinton arrived in the Mexican capital a day after the United States...

WASHINGTON – The Mexican government is not on the verge of collapse, the top U.S. intelligence official said Thursday, seeking to tamp down increasing alarm over the powerful and violent drug cartels operating in the country that is the United States' southern neighbor. "Mexico is in no danger of becoming a failed state," said National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair at his first news conference Thursday. Echoing the assessment of Mexico's leaders, Blair said the dramatic increase in killings in Mexico is a result of that government's crackdown on drug cartels.

The head of the Department of Homeland Security turned down an offer for more money to fight crime along the U.S.’s southern border, saying she’ll pay for it with the funds she has. “These actions so far are designed to be budget-neutral,” she said. “What I have done is identify other activities that are less urgent ... to be able to move these resources where I think they are needed most.”

Border Patrol agents are arresting an increased number of dangerous criminals at the border, officials say. "We're talking about major things. Homicides, sex offenders, big robberies, armed robberies--things to that degree," says agent Mike Scioli. Scioli says more dangerous criminals are trying to enter the U.S. -- a disturbing yet growing trend along the southern border. This past weekend, a group of 34 illegals were apprehended by agents near Ajo. Two of them were members of a notorious and ruthless gang known as MS-13. How did agents find out? Finger prints and tattoos were a dead-giveaway. "These two individuals, not...

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived here Wednesday with the clearest acknowledgment yet from a senior Obama administration official of the role the United States plays in the violent drug trade racking Mexico.“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” she said, using unusually blunt language. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”

The war against the Shining Path rebels, which took nearly 70,000 lives, supposedly ended in 2000. But here in one of the most remote corners of the Andes, the combination of a renewed military campaign, a resurgent rebel faction and a lucrative cocaine trade may be sparking it back to life. The drizzle-shrouded jungle of Vizcatán, a 250-square-mile region in the Apurímac and Ene River Valley, nine hours by four-wheel drive along switchbacks from the Maoist rebels' Andean cradle of Ayacucho, is Peru's largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. The Shining Path controls a large part of...

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom announced that it is reopening dialogue with the political wing of Hezbollah. Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom has only banned Hezbollah's terrorist (External Security Organization) and military wings. The ban on the terrorist wing came in 2000, while the ban on the military wing only came in June 2008 in response to Hezbollah's "providing active support to militants in Iraq who are responsible for attacks both on coalition forces and on Iraqi civilians, including providing training in the use of deadly roadside bombs," for plots to kidnap British security workers in Iraq,...

Recent arrests in a mistaken killing point to the perilous presence of gangs The order was clear: Kill the guy in the Astros jersey. But in a case of mistaken identity, Jose Perez ended up dead. The intended target — the Houston-based head of a Mexican drug cartel cell pumping millions of dollars of cocaine into the city — walked away. Perez, 27, was just a working guy, out getting dinner late on a Friday with his wife and young children at Chilos, a seafood restaurant on the Gulf Freeway. His murder and the assassination gone awry point to the...

The macabre admission is just the latest indication of the depth of Mexico's drug violence. Some US observers say the cartels now pose a direct threat to the Mexican government's survival, and, by extension, a growing security threat to the US. The state prosecutors' office said it was looking into more than 450 missing persons' cases from the past eight years. The Wall Street Journal wrote in an opinion piece that the "body count" in drug-related violence in Mexico so far this year is already 354. It noted that a police commander was recently beheaded in the Mexican state of...

PHOENIX — As police approached a drug cartel's safe house in northwestern Mexico last May, gunmen inside poured on fire with powerful assault rifles and grenades, killing seven officers whose weapons were no match. Four more lawmen were wounded in the bloodbath and a cache of weapons was seized, including a single AK-47 assault rifle that authorities say was purchased 800 miles away at a Phoenix gun shop and smuggled into Mexico.

Assassinations related to drug trafficking in Mexico are on pace to pass 4,000 this year. By any count, violence in Mexico is at historical highs, and it is bad for business. Since the end of 2007, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon increased government pressure on organized crime, both the Sinaloa and the Gulf cartels have reached beyond Mexican boundaries to source supplies, secure trafficking routes and kill rivals. Heavy pressure on Colombian drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) opened the door for Mexicans to control a greater share of the cocaine supply chain. They now control cocaine routes out of Colombia from Andean...

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19, 2008 – The poppy trade that fuels terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan is a problem that must be addressed but doesn’t have a military solution, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here last night. Speaking at a dinner hosted by the Pacific Council on International Policy, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said the narcotics trade serves as the baseline for Afghanistan’s economy. Farmers in a country that ranks among the poorest in the world, Mullen said, have little choice but to cultivate poppy to sell to insurgents, who turn profits from opium trade on...

March 25, 2008: The bonanza of captured documents from two recently killed FARC leaders, confirmed the sharp decline in FARC strength. A decade ago, FARC had nearly 18,000 fighters under arms. Now, fewer than 9,000 gunmen are out there, and many are inclined to surrender to the government, or just run away. In the last year alone, FARC lost 4,000 people (38 percent were killed, the rest deserted or were captured). This is more than double the losses of 2006. Recruiting is more difficult, largely because FARC is no longer cool, or very safe. The FARC deserters come home and...

The Colombian navy has seized two homemade submarines believed to have been built by the Farc rebel group to smuggle cocaine out of the country. The two fibreglass vessels were found in a clandestine shipyard outside the country's largest port, Buenaventura. One of the 17m (56ft) submarines was ready for launch, while the other had nearly been completed, the navy said. Correspondents say drug-traffickers are increasingly relying on the sea to avoid checkpoints and border crossings. Since 2005, the Colombian armed forces have uncovered nine homemade submarines, including a 20m (66ft) vessel on the country's Caribbean coast in August. In...

QUITO, ECUADOR — The Ecuadorean government on Friday insisted on ending a cooperation agreement with the United States that allows the U.S. military to use a coastal air force base for anti-drug operations in the Andes. -snip- ...Galo Mora, a representative of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, told participants at a solidarity forum with Cuba. The 10-year agreement, signed by the United States and Ecuador in 1999, allows Washington to deploy up to 475 military personnel in Manta in support of counternarcotics operations.

Maoist rebels in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand have been growing opium poppies to fund their operations in the region, officials say. The rebels have a presence in 18 of the 22 districts in Jharkhand. The Maoists say they are fighting for more rights for indigenous people in at least five states, including neighbouring Bihar, which has a reputation as India's most lawless state. What began as small scale poppy cultivation in the remote areas of Chatra and Katkamsandi in Hazaribagh district two years ago has now flourished into a booming activity spread over some 20,000 acres of land...

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican government will expand its anti-drug raids to two states across the border from Texas, deploying more than 3,000 soldiers, sailors and federal police, officials said Sunday. The raids will cover Nuevo Laredo, a town across the border from Laredo, Texas, that has been bloodied by turf wars between drug gangs in recent years. Officials also said that in the two months since intensive raids began in central and western Mexico, they have destroyed almost as many opium fields as plots of marijuana, long Mexico's principal drug crop. "We have begun a frontal struggle against organized...

Suspected rebels in Peru have killed seven men, including five policemen, in an ambush in the country's coca-growing interior. The police convoy was attacked during a crackdown on illegal coca-growing in the second major ambush in a year. The interior ministry has not blamed any group for the attack but remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla movement are known to operate in the region. More than 20 police have been killed in ambushes in the last year. The rebel group, which led one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies in the 1980s and 1990s, has claimed responsibility for similar attacks. The...

Troops have been dispatched to the central Andean valleys of Peru in recent weeks to counter renewed guerrilla activity by re-equipped leftist rebels of the Shining Path, according to high level government officials. ... Twenty-three members of the group have been arrested since Shining Path resumed operations at the beginning of the year with a road ambush that killed eight police officers. In a videotape released at the end of last month, a hooded leader using the pseudonym of Comandante Artemio said the group would resume large-scale attacks in three months. ...Comandante Artemio threatened to renew attacks unless the government...

Federal prosecutors in Miami were prepared to indict Raul Castro as the head of a major cocaine smuggling conspiracy in 1993, but the Clinton Administration Justice Department overruled them, current and former Justice Department officials tell ABC News. The officials say Castro, as Cuban Defense Minister, permitted Colombian drug lords to pay for the use of Cuban waters and airstrips as staging grounds for smuggling runs into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s. "It was a major investigation involving numerous witnesses that was killed at the highest levels in Washington," said a former Justice Department official...

Right poised to buck the trend in ColombiaBy Jeremy McDermott in Bogota(Filed: 27/05/2006) Colombia is set to buck the Left-ward trend in Latin America tomorrow with Right-wing president Alvaro Uribe likely to secure a second term.Mr Uribe, 53, an Oxford-educated lawyer and yoga fanatic, changed the constitution to stand a second time and all the polls suggest he is far ahead of his rivals.   Alvaro Uribe has had an average of 60pc support in every poll The key to his success is simple: Colombia is racked by a 43-year-old civil conflict, and Mr Uribe has made himself the champion...

HARLINGEN -- Gov. Rick Perry and Mexican Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores were scheduled to discuss border security and drug violence at a joint appearance today. Hernandez Flores is governor of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, which includes the violence-plagued city of Nuevo Laredo. Perry has said U.S. border security is a federal responsibility but that the state cannot wait for Washington to direct more equipment and manpower toward the border. Border violence, particularly in Nuevo Laredo, has been blamed on cartels warring over a smuggling hub where Mexican and U.S. highways converge. In 2005, more than 170 people were...

MEXICO CITY - Wracked by violent drug crime and too poor to arm its police properly, the Mexican state of Guerrero is seeking a $24 million bank loan to buy more guns and security equipment. The local government plans to use the credit, approved by its Congress, to get guns, communications gear and police cars for the most cash-strapped parts of Guerrero, one of Mexico's poorest states, the state government said on Friday. "We want to seek a credit line to acquire transportation and arms," a state government spokesman said. Guerrero, whose craggy hills hide numerous marijuana and poppy fields,...

"Washington wants to curb Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's anti-American influence by lobbying allies to try to expose any anti-democratic policies, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday..." "Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, and influential player on U.S. policy toward Latin America, said Chavez may give $50 million to the Palestinian group Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist organization... "...Such a move would further strain deteriorating ties between the United States and one of its top oil suppliers after the countries each expelled diplomats this year in a dispute over alleged U.S. espionage. "Chavez has said the...

We are bordering on madness By Dimitri Vassilaros TRIBUNE-REVIEW Friday, February 17, 2006 Two nations are threatening American law-enforcement officers who protect this republic's southern border. Mexico is the obvious threat. The other will stun you. Men dressed as Mexican soldiers have set foot on American soil more than 200 times in the last decade. The Mexican government claims they are impersonators helping drug warlords' shipping into the United States. Whether soldiers or soldiers of fortune, Mexico has done virtually nothing to stop incursions by heavily armed forces in military-style Humvees. Mexico's inaction surely has helped embolden drug warlords salivating...

For years I have tried to warn people about the heating up of trouble spots "south of the border" ( Central & South America ), the inter-linking of terrorist groups there and elsewhere, and the Cuban/left-wing ties to all this.Here are links, pulled from other links & posts, to give you a heads-up on "what the media doesn't want to talk about...." China's Whampoa Ltd. opens port in Bahamas Unresolved Questions- the Panama canal, good, bad, or a waiting disaster?--thread II Fidel May Be Part of Terror Campaign Yes, Cuba is a terrorist nation Castro: "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation ...

MEXICO CITY Mexico says its arrested four Iraqis who were trying to sneak into the United States without the proper documents. Mexico's Attorney General's office says police -- acting on an anonymous tip -- found the four aboard a bus in the northern city of Navajoa (nav-ah-HO-. That's about 375 miles south of the Arizona border. The statement says the Iraqis were in Mexico illegally. Officials are investigating the background of the four and trying to determine how they got into Mexico. Many undocumented Iraqi nationals have been captured in Mexican territory en route to the U-S border. None have...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who just announced that she is weighing a run for Senate, plans to protest again outside President Bush's Texas ranch, Venezuela's president said Sunday with Sheehan by his side. Hugo Chavez, his arm around Sheehan's shoulders, told a group of activists that Sheehan had told him that during Holy Week, in April, "she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr. Danger's ranch." "She invited me to put up a tent. Maybe I'll put up my tent also," Chavez said, to applause from activists invited to his...

With its restrictions on everything from foreign ownership of real estate to the carrying of sidearms by American drug agents assigned there, the government of Mexico has made its touchiness about its sovereignty clear time and again. But when it comes to the sovereignty of the United States of America, Mexican contempt seems to know few limits. The latest example came at 3:15 p.m. Monday, as yet another standoff between armed Mexicans and American law-enforcement officers took place in Texas at the very spot where a similar standoff (described by Paul Green in a column on the Opinion 2 page...

Posted on Tue, Jan. 24, 2006 LATIN AMERICA Bolivian praises coca and CastroEvo Morales' first day as president of Bolivia included meeting leaders of Cuba and Venezuela and the swearing-in of a leftist Cabinet. BY JACK CHANG, Knight Ridder News Service LA PAZ, Bolivia - Newly inaugurated Bolivian President Evo Morales began his historic, five-year term Monday by meeting with leaders from Cuba and Venezuela, two of Latin America's harshest critics of U.S. policy, before swearing in a Cabinet largely made up of political radicals. His Cabinet choices included a former housekeeper turned union activist as justice minister and a...

IN ONE of the bloodiest incidents for more than a decade, Shining Path guerrillas ambushed and killed eight police officers, amid fears that money from drug trafficking is giving the Peruvian rebel group a new lease of life. The ambush was set along the road to Aucayacu, more than 240 miles east of Lima. As the vehicle carrying nine officers entered the rebel killing zone, 20 members of the Shining Path opened up with automatic weapons. The police driver managed to get the vehicle off the road, where those not killed in the initial hail of gunfire fought on for...

NEW YORK - A Taliban-linked drug lord who allegedly sought to poison U.S. streets with millions of dollars of heroin in a deadly "American jihad" has become the first person extradited from Afghanistan to face federal charges, officials said Monday. Haji Baz Mohammad, one of the world's "most wanted, most powerful and most dangerous" drug kingpins, had helped finance the Taliban by selling opium since 1990, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administrator Karen Tandy said. "In return, the Taliban protected Mohammad's crops, his heroin labs, his drug transportation labs and his associates," Tandy said after a conspiracy indictment was unsealed accusing Mohammad...

LIMA, Peru, Aug. 19, 2005 – Peru has become a leader in confronting terrorism and narcoterrorism, but it's critical that the region's countries all work together to deal with the common threats they face, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said here Aug. 18 during a joint press conference with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo. "The problems that our respective countries face of terrorism, ... narcotrafficking, hostage-taking (and) crime are problems that no one country can deal with alone," the secretary said in the Peruvian presidential palace. "It requires regional cooperation." Toledo called these challenges a "shared responsibility" among the South American community...

WND Exclusive CONTROLLING THE SUBSTANCES Big money in Mexican meth New laws cut down on U.S. labs, but drugs still flow Posted: August 19, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com While new state and federal laws are cutting down the number of U.S. meth labs, the deadly drugs continue to flow into the U.S. across the porous border with Mexico, say law enforcement authorities. The federal anti-meth law was recently amended to permit states to impose their own stiffer restrictions and penalties. In Oregon, for instance, legislators now require cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a principal ingredient in methamphetamine, to...

The three Irishmen in hiding after being sentenced to 17 years in prison for training Farc rebels in Colombia have returned to Ireland and insisted they are not on the run. Martin McAuley, Niall Connolly and Jim Monaghan have been on the run since a Bogota court overturned their original acquittal in December. A Government spokesman has been quoted as saying the Government had no prior knowledge of the men's return. "This issue was not part of the Government's discussions with Sinn Fein and we had no prior knowledge of their return to Ireland," a spokesperson said. The Department of...

TUMACO, COLOMBIA - Tipped off by informants, Colombian authorities were nonetheless stunned by what they found on a jungle mission near the Ecuadorean border. In the largest-ever drug seizure in Colombia, police and naval forces seized eight boats on the Mira River that were packed with 15 metric tons of cocaine. Agents confiscated so many packets of white powder that the stash later burned for 19 hours in a police bonfire. But the quantity of cocaine, worth an estimated $400 million, wasn't the only surprise during the raid conducted earlier this month. According to Colombian authorities, the narcotics were produced...

BOGOTA, Colombia May 17, 2005 — Speedboats laden with tons of rebel-produced cocaine slip through Caribbean waters to the palm-fringed coasts of Central America, and return to Colombia stuffed with weapons for the guerrillas. Police investigate high-profile kidnappings in Venezuela and Paraguay, and find the fingerprints of Colombian rebels all over them. From the jungles of Central America to South America's southern cone, Colombia's main rebel group has been expanding its criminal activities, according to law enforcement officials and political leaders across the continent. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, began battling for the rights of peasants in...

WASHINGTON: Maoists in Nepal are reportedly involved in smuggling narcotics, mostly to India, to fund their insurgency and the Kingdom does not have laws to target drug-related corruption, the US has said. The state department, in its annual report on narcotic drugs, said the Maoist insurgency has an impact on rule-of-law and interdiction efforts in many parts of Nepal. "Police have reconfirmed that production of cannabis is on the rise in the southern areas of the country, and that most is destined for the Indian market," it said. The report said that police have also intercepted locally produced hashish en...

Drugs and Terror: Understanding the Link and the Impact on America "It's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America." President George W. Bush There is an undeniable link between acts of terror and illicit drugs. Law enforcement officials around the world have long recognized this close connection, but a changing world and recent events have made this link more relevant in the daily...

Drugs, Russia and Terrorism Joseph D. Douglass Jr. Editor's Note: This article is the first part of a two-part article. quot;When we fight drugs, we fight the war on terror,quot; President Bush explained on Feb. 12 as he announced an increase in the budget for the war on drugs. He is right. Additionally, we cannot wage a real war on terrorism without waging a real war on illegal drugs, because the two are closely coupled. The two are so intertwined that perhaps the real question is quot;How can we win a war on terrorism if we can't win a war...

Defense and Foreign Affairs, October 21, 2004 KLA Video Shows Holbrooke, Clark Raising Funds for Kerry Campaign from KLA-linked Albanians, and Shows Ongoing Acquisitions From GIS Station Amsterdam and other sources. A recent video produced by Albanians who identified themselves as members of the ostensibly-banned Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has been broadcast on Dutch television, showing KLA members giving donations to members of the US Presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry. The video also shows former US Presidential candidate and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark and former US Ass. Sec. of State Richard Holbrooke - now both...