Mexico thwarts Hezbollah bid to set up South American network

Mexico foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to establish a network in South America, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Tuesday. Hezbollah operatives employed Mexicans nationals with family ties to Lebanon to set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West, the Al-Seyassah daily said. According to the report, Mexican police mounted a surveillance operation on the group's leader, Jameel Nasr, who traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hezbollah commanders there. Police say Nasr also made frequent trips to other countries in Latin America, including a two-month stay in Venezuela in the summer of 2008. Nasr was living in Tijuana, Mexico at the time of his arrest, the report said. The report follows warnings from the United States that Hezbollah and its backer Iran are stepping up operations in the region.

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West African cocaine use rises along smuggling routes

West Africans are consuming more of the drugs trafficked between South America and Europe, raising the spectre of rising crime and health problems in already unstable states, experts said. The region, an established transit point for Latin American cocaine to big Western markets, has also become a drug processing site amid rising addiction rates, and drug-related violence will follow, they told a drug summit over the weekend. "A flourishing illicit trade in the hands of organised crime is obviously a threat to the rule of law, governance and, as a result, human rights," said Alexandre Schmidt, West African head for the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "But we must no longer hide the indirect consequences with regard to the increase in problems linked to drug abuse." About 20 tonnes of cocaine passed through West Africa in 2008, worth about $1-billion, the United Nations says. The warnings came during a meeting of seven West African governments who, backed by the United Nations, France and Spain, are seeking to implement declarations of intent to curb trafficking.

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Al Qaeda linked to rogue aviation network

In early 2008, an official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a report to his superiors detailing what he called "the most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11." The document warned that a growing fleet of rogue jet aircraft was regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean. On one end of the air route, it said, are cocaine-producing areas in the Andes controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. On the other are some of West Africa's most unstable countries.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, was ignored, and the problem has since escalated into what security officials in several countries describe as a global security threat. The clandestine fleet has grown to include twin-engine turboprops, executive jets and retired Boeing 727s that are flying multi-ton loads of cocaine and possibly weapons to an area in Africa where factions of al-Qaeda are believed to be facilitating the smuggling of drugs to Europe, the officials say.

Gunmen and bandits with links to AQIM have also stepped up kidnappings of Europeans for ransom, who are then passed on to AQIM factions seeking ransom payments. The aircraft hopscotch across South American countries, picking up tons of cocaine and jet fuel, officials say. They then soar across the Atlantic to West Africa and the Sahel, where the drugs are funneled across the Sahara Desert and into Europe.

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