MidEast

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Report: Hezbollah Smuggling Arms to Criminal Gangs in Brazil

Citing a report in a Brazilian newspaper O GloboThe Jerusalem Post reported today that Hezbollah has been smuggling arms to criminal gangs in that country.

According to the report in the Rio de Janeiro-based paper, Federal investigators in Brazil have been probing possible ties between Lebanon and criminal gangs in Brazil for the past eight years.

Hezbollah-linked groups allegedly began smuggling arms into Brazil back in 2006, according to federal documents obtained by O Globo, which suggest that Lebanon’s lucrative drug trade played a key role in funding the illegal trade.

Iran has long sought to extend its ties into South and Central America. A State Department report last year documented how Iran established “a network of intelligence agents specifically tasked with sponsoring and executing terrorist attacks in the Western Hemisphere.” An indictment prepared by Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman last year detailed the terror network Iran has created in South America.

In its most notorious attack in South America, Hezbollah, acting at the behest of Iran, blew up the AMIA Jewish community center twenty years, ago killing 85 people. But as Eamonn MacDonagh wrote in Has Argentina Turned Against its Jews?, which was published in the October 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, rather than seeking justice for the crime committed on its soil by demanding the extradition of the suspects from Iran, Argentina has set up a joint commission with Iran:

The two countries were setting up a joint Argentine-Iranian commission comprised of jurists from both nations—with the participation of a few others from third countries—in order to “examine the documents presented” by the two sides. The proceedings of the commission were, naturally, to be held in Tehran. The Argentine court seeking extradition of the Iranian fugitives would be able to question the suspects, but only in Iran. At the end of the investigation, the commission would supposedly draw up a report that the parties would bind themselves to “take into account.”

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