Venezuelan drug kingpin's ring was infiltrated by DEA agents

[Bacchus39]

Pictures, wiretappings and testimonies of confidential sources are part of the thorough investigation made by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to indict alleged drug trafficker Walid Makled and charge some Venezuelan officials as accomplices.

The affidavit by Drug Enforcement Special Agent Gregory Ball, which is a piece of evidence used by the US District Court of the Southern District of New York to request the extradition of Walid Makled, includes the testimony of two people close to Makled García, also known as "The Arab" or "The Turk."

In the inquiry, confidential sources close to Makled are identified as CS-1 and CS-2.

According to Ball, CS-1 met "The Arab" several years ago and he knew that Makled "made payments to the Venezuelan police and national guard so that aircraft loaded with cocaine departed safely from airports and airstrips located in Venezuela."

The agent also said that a source, identified as CS-2, met with Makled on several occasions and he also knew that Venezuelan officials were paid to facilitate the shipment of drugs.


---------------------------------------------

Venezuela's extreme interest in Makled is becoming even more clear. http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/11/18/en_pol_esp_venezuelan-drug-king_18A4746573.shtml

[EFerrari]

1. I don't know who less credible, the DEA or El Universal. n/t

[social_critic]

4. I'm sure the Holy Trinity watches over Venezuelan police

And keeps them immaculate in thought and deed, strong of character, a force of such probity and purity, that not one of them can be bribed by a multi-millionaire drug lord.

[EFerrari]

5. The government has been actively engaged in cleaning up the police force

so that the Holy Trinity could lay back for once.

Which is much more than you can say for the American government and DEA.

lol

[ChangoLoa]

7. Actively *saying* they're cleaning up the police

Are there any results from the cleaning up? Less violence? Less people killed by the police force?

Sincerely, I don't see any.

[ChangoLoa]

6. A brilliant exception it is...

[Peace Patriot]

2. "Extreme interest"? The Chavez government BUSTED Makled's 'enterprises' and he is also wanted

in Venezuela in connection the murders of 2 journalists who were investigating him. That's a LEGITIMATE interest--not an "extreme" interest, unless you mean "extreme" in the pursuit of justice, which I'm sure you don't mean.

Makled then fled to Colombia TO ESCAPE VENEZUELAN JUSTICE. And only then did the DEA seek extradition. They were second in line, which Santos and other authorities in Colombia have pointed out.

Makled undoubtedly knows a thing or two about the rightwing death squads operating in Venezuela and Colombia, which the DOJ, the U.S. federal court in Washington DC, Alvaro Uribe and Bushwhack ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, so 'diligently' tried to cover up, by extraditing death squad witnesses to the U.S., in the dead of night, over the objections of Colombian prosecutors, and 'burying' them in the U.S. federal prison system, out of the reach of the Colombian prosecutors, by completely sealing their cases! And Obama's AG appointee, Eric Holder--Chiquita-Colombia's death squad attorney, in private practice--let them get away with it! Aided and abetted!

This is not right. And this indicates that the U.S. government has ULTERIOR motives in extraditions from Colombia--I would guess the cover up of Bush Junta war crimes in Colombia. There is plenty of reason to suspect this, from Uribe/Brownfield's SECRETLY negotiated and signed U.S./Colombia military agreement, among other things granting TOTAL DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY to all U.S. soldiers and U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia, to the recent State Department "fining" of Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." WHAT has Blackwater and/or the U.S. military been DOING in Colombia, authorized BY WHOM, to require secretly negotiated "total diplomatic immunity"?

What are the U.S. government's motives with Makled? That's what we should be asking. Something is NOT RIGHT in U.S./Colombia relations. In this case I would guess that Makled is a CIA ally or operative, whose illegal operations were being used either to "turn" Venezuelan government/military officials, or to cook up evidence that they did. And I would imagine that the CIA wants to secure that "evidence" that Makled says he has, so it can never be objectively vetted--very reminiscent of the "miracle laptops"--and/or "bring their agent in." He got caught. He had his story all ready, for getting caught in Venezuela--that the government is dirty. But this could be more than the shrewd "protection" that a master criminal pre-arranged for himself, and could instead be the whole point of the operation.

You want to cast aspersions on the Chavez government's motives in seeking Makled's extradition. But it was the Chavez government that BUSTED Makled! So what kind of sense does THAT make? They were illicitly benefiting from his operations but they busted him and all his businesses?

I think the DEA and the whole war profiteer establishment here is just as enraged as they can be, that the Chavez government threw their goddamned "war on drugs" out of Venezuela, followed by Bolivia doing the same, and Ecuador doing the same. Bolivia said that the DEA was supporting the white separatists who were trying to tear the country to pieces! The DEA is not to be trusted in Latin America. They are liars, trouble-makers, and U.S. corpo-fascist operatives, in addition to shilling for U.S.-based manufacturers of toxic pesticides and weapons makers. Everywhere they go, peasant farmers are driven from their land and organic farming is destroyed, in favor of toxic corporate agriculture. Colombia is the prime example--FIVE MILLION peasant farmers driven from their farms, by state terror, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. The DEA is a blight in Latin America. And in their absence, Venezuela has increased their arrests of drug kingpins three-fold! I think the DEA is protecting the big drug lords. It wasn't until they got booted out of Venezuela that the Venezuela government was able to shut Makled down.

The American people need to really understand what is going on in Latin America because we are paying for it, not just in billions of wasted dollars, but in the sacrifice or our good name. This is a MURDEROUS war--the "war on drugs." Murderous, corrupt, failed, and wasteful and ruinous beyond belief. It is furthermore being used for covert and overt political purposes--of which this Makled affair is very likely a prime example. Our government is clearly controlled by the profiteers who are perpetuating this war and using it for their own ends. And stupid-making posts like yours--riffing off a superficial corpo-fascist 'news' story to score points against a popular leftist government--just add to the ignorance.

Connie Mack wants Makled in the U.S. Need I say more?

[Judi Lynn]

3. Thanks for pointing out some facts which should have been grasped by the O.P.

It's almost impossible to misunderstand them.

Here's one article from last August:

Drug Trafficking Suspect Wanted by U.S. Is Arrested in Colombia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 21, 2010

~snip~
General Naranjo called the arrest an important victory for Colombian and United States authorities, and said the Venezuelan legal system also contributed. Venezuelan prosecutors, meanwhile, announced that they were also asking a court to approve an extradition request. Venezuelan authorities issued an arrest order for Mr. Makled last year through Interpol, prosecutors said in a statement on Friday.

Mr. Makled has been wanted in Venezuela since November 2008, when the authorities seized cocaine at a ranch he owned. Three of his brothers, Abdalá, Alex and Basel, were arrested in the case, prosecutors said. Mr. Makled has been named as a possible suspect in two killings in Venezuela, including that of the journalist Orel Zambrano, a newspaper columnist who was slain in January 2009 by two gunmen on a motorcycle. The Venezuelan police have accused Mr. Makled of being behind the slaying. Mr. Zambrano had been covering drug cases in which the Makled family was accused of involvement. Venezuelan authorities also suspect Mr. Makled had links to the killing of Francisco Larrazabal, a veterinarian involved in horse racing.

General Naranjo called Mr. Makled, 43 and the son of a Syrian immigrant, a “pseudo businessman,” saying his money came from drugs rather than legitimate operations run by him and his family, including the Venezuelan airline Aeropostal. The family also had a warehousing business at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela’s biggest port.

He said Colombian authorities think Mr. Makled also had a role in the 2008 killing of Wilber Varela, known as “Jabón,” or “Soap,” one of Colombia’s most wanted drug traffickers. Mr. Varela was found shot to death in the Venezuelan city of Mérida.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/americas/21colombia.html