| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caribbean-Latin America |
| More on al-Qaeda in Central America |
| 2004-10-23 |
| It's a U.S. Homeland Security Department nightmare, and Honduras' most outspoken Cabinet member says it's happening: Al-Qaida operatives recruiting Central American gang members to carry out regional attacks and slip terrorists into the United States. Yet U.S. and Central American officials say they have found no evidence supporting Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez's allegations. And human rights groups accuse Alvarez of trumping terrorism reports to justify his crackdown on gangs, who in response have adopted terror-style tactics such as beheadings - 20 so far - and threatened the government. Romulo Emiliani, a Roman Catholic bishop working closely with gang members in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, called the reports "an attempt to distract the public while the government puts thousands of youths in jail." The U.S. government has long worried terrorists would tap into smuggling networks that move migrants and narcotics across Mexico's porous northern border and into the United States. To combat those fears, Mexico has worked with the United States to keep a close eye on drug and smuggling activity. It also has made it much harder to enter Mexican territory legally if a person comes from a country with terror ties. Alvarez, however, has stoked fears that terrorists are joining migrants crossing illegally into Mexico from Central America, then moving north. A spokesman for Mexico's National Immigration Institute said officials have caught "a significant number" of people from the Middle East trying to sneak into the United States from Mexico, although he refused to release exact numbers. One smuggler was arrested recently for allegedly moving Iranians and Iraqis into the United States. There has been at least one confirmed report of a suspected terrorist in Central America. U.S. and Panamanian officials say Saudi native and alleged al-Qaida leader Adnan G. El Shukrijumah stayed in Panama for 10 days in April 2001, five months before the Sept. 11 attacks. There also are fears El Salvador could be hit by terrorists for supporting the U.S.-led mission in Iraq. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 Publicize the bounty on Shukrijumah. If anything, gang members are capitalists at heart. |
| Posted by: ed 2004-10-23 8:40:03 AM |
| #1 Gentle readers, I can't vouch for the Honduran situation, but I've spent time reviewing a videotape made by Latin Americans (Brazilians, to be specific) of the military base I was stationed at here in the good old USA. To the untrained it would probably look like a tourist video, but the subject's constant muttering while filming about how much the tape's buyer better appreciate this, how much risk he's taking, how he could go to jail for this--all make it quite clear he knew what he was doing. To anyone who's ever done targeting, it was clear how he was directed to sweep from certain point to certain point, identify certain features, and close in on others. His was a recon mission, and he wouldn't have been caught if he hadn't have gotten lost on a side road. In the end we couldn't hold him, but we kept his tape, the police kept his car, and INS sent him back to Brazil. We never found out who tasked him, by what means, for how much. Anyone can be paid to perform a mission for the Islamogangsters, even lily white Americans. That the Islamogangsters can tap into existing South American networks for a lot of functions is no surprise. Worse, the South American angle is the least funded portion of the GWOT, because it's been tarred as the Drug War. IF the Islamonazis are seriously attempting to mount another major attack, they could do worse than to come from our southrn front. |
| Posted by: longtime lurker 2004-10-23 8:38:16 AM |