Reports of al-Qaeda in Latin America should not confuse the US Congress with facts.

Channel 6 News in Costa Rica is reporting that four men with false Bangladesh passports were turned away back to Nicaragua and denied entrance to Costa Rica.


Al Qaeda alert in Nicaragua

Filadelfo Aleman in Managua, Nicaragua | May 25, 2005 14:02 IST

Nicaragua's National Police declared an alert along its borders because of the "possible presence" of two suspected members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Central America, officials said Tuesday.
An Interior Ministry news release identified the two as Ahmad Salim Swaydan, suspected of involvement an April 2002 plot against the US Embassy in Thailand, and a Yemeni man known only as Altuwiti.

A photo of Swaydan released by Nicaraguan authorities matched that of a man on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list: Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, a 36-year-old Kenyan indicted on December 16, 1998 for alleged involvement in the bombings that year of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The US State Department has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest.

Is Hezbollah and other Islamic Terror Groups in Latin America?

We need some common sense on the immigration bill. There is no urgency that it be done this week. There is no reason that it should apply to all countries of origin equally. Serious security issues need to be considered. Along with security concerns, there needs to be some serious discussions about the economic impact to US social services at all levels of governments. There needs to be honest debate. This is but one more reason for caution:

Hezbollah builds a Western base
From inside South America’s Tri-border area, Iran-linked militia targets U.S.

'We are Muslims. I am Hezbollah.'
Mustafa Khalil Meri, a Hezbollah militiaman in Paraguay, says the militant Islamist group would take violent revenge inside the United States if it were to attack Iran.
Telemundo & msnbc.com

By Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem
NBC News
Updated: 9:29 a.m. ET May 9, 2007

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay - The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it, according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the continent.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.

They are men like Mustafa Khalil Meri, a young Arab Muslim whom Telemundo interviewed in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city and the center of the Tri-border region. There is nothing particularly distinctive about him, but beneath the everyday T-shirt he wears beats the heart of a devoted Hezbollah militiaman.

“If he attacks Iran, in two minutes Bush is dead,” Meri said. “We are Muslims. I am Hezbollah. We are Muslims, and we will defend our countries at any time they are attacked.”

More here and you can download a pdf report on Hezbollah America Latina: Strange Group or Real

Terrror in Acapulco. Wishful Thinking Will Not Control Latin American Gangs.

One of the true outrages of human behavior is that in the downward spiral to depravity, outrage accelerates and becomes a virus copied and transferred by the maggots that infect the herd. It is a universal pathology. We see many current examples, most recently in the religion of peace. The insanity hard-wired into Islam allowed the mimicking of suicide bombing to accelerate to the point that the supply of suicide murderers actually exceeds demand.

Abhorrent and lethal behavior developed in Chechnya, was copied in Iraq and has since blown-back to Afghanistan.

There has always been the fear that the violent atrocities in Iraq would be copied and further developed outside of Iraq. The concern was ridiculed and twisted to be anti-American, leftist, and non-patriotic, but the drivel about being able to isolate and destroy the jihadis on a select field of battle in Iraq so we would not fight them in the Americas (as if Baghdad was Agincourt), was always patent nonsense.

Well, the wheel, as always, turns, and in this case towards our neighbor to the south. Latin American gangs in Mexico have brazenly spiced things up a notch.

An assault and attack in Acapulco has a real whiff of some jihadi salsa. Narco-terrorist gangs, dressed as police, attack government offices, murder police and government officials and video record the attack.

Latin America is rife with human flotsam. It is churned out in battalion strength, funded by drug money and virulent antiestablishment Marxists and anarchists. Many of them are in every American city. There are many more potential terrorists in the US from Latin america than there are from the Middle East. They are lethal and have the potential to become more so. I hope this is not a hint of things to come, but security and national policies should never be built on wishful thinking.

Seven dead in Acapulco ambushes

"Acapulco used to be a paradise resort before the gangs moved in"

At least seven people have been killed in simultaneous attacks on government offices in Mexico's resort of Acapulco.
In one attack, gunmen opened fire at a state attorney general's office, killing two policemen, a public prosecutor and a secretary.

Elsewhere, two policemen and a secretary were killed when another group attacked a police station.

The attacks come after President Felipe Calderon ordered thousands of troops to the city to tackle drug-related crime.

The twin assaults, which occurred just before 1100 (1700 GMT), were carried out by groups of about eight heavily armed gunmen said to be wearing army-style khaki uniforms. At one of the offices a gunman asked those inside "Are you the only ones here?", before the other men opened fire. Eyewitnesses say both attacks were filmed by the gangs.

President Calderon has called an emergency meeting with his security cabinet to discuss the attacks in two neighbourhoods about 15km (nine miles) north of the tourist zone.

Wave of attacks

The BBC's Duncan Kennedy in Mexico says Acapulco, once a haven for film stars, has suffered a wave of attacks in the past year as rival drug cartels fight to control coastal smuggling routes.

Last month the president sent almost 8,000 troops and federal police to the region to tackle the gangs. A further 16,000 have been sent to other lawless regions of the country.

Tourists have not been immune from Acapulco's violence either. On Saturday two Canadian travellers suffered minor injuries after being grazed by bullets at one of the city's hotels.

In January there were 190 gang-related deaths in Mexico - just a handful less than a year ago despite the government crackdown.