Next time you cut a line of cocaine, think of the World Trade Center bombings.
Next time you cut a line of cocaine, think of the World Trade Center bombings.
Yesterday’s federal indictment of Omar Isa, Haruna Turé, and Idris Abdelraman, three self-avowed Al Qaeda operatives, in the Southern District of New York, provides the first irrefutable link between the drug trafficking conducted by Colombia’s Armed Revolutionary Forces (FARC) and Al Qaeda.
Isa, Turé and Abdelraman were arrested in Ghana for trying to transport hundreds of kilos of Colombian FARC cocaine from Mali to Spain, via Algeria, Libya or Morocco. They were caught after a sting operation conducted between September and December 2009 by three DEA (US Drug Enforcement Agency) agents posing as FARC representatives.
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The three accused had promised the undercover agents that Al Qaeda would protect the transport of their cocaine throughout the African route. Turé had even suggested to the undercover agents the possibility of kidnapping a foreigner in order to “raise money for the cause.”
Michele Leonhart, Director of Operations of the DEA, said that these arrests “are another proof of the direct link that exists between dangerous terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, and the international drug trafficking that supports their violent activities.”
Considering that the wealthy industrialized nations such as the US and the UK (which has the highest per capita cocaine consumption in Europe by a huge margin) are both the largest consumers of cocaine and the greatest targets of terrorism, perhaps the best way to conduct the “war on terror” is to work on reducing their own drug consumption.
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