Free Republic

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

On the surface there would seem to be little to unite the Aryan racialists of the neo-Nazi movement with the terrorists of radical Islam. To the neo-Nazis, Muslims are almost all members of ``inferior`` races; and to the Islamic terrorists, the neo-Nazis are almost without exception either atheists or members of fringe quasi-Christian sects. But the reality is that there has been close cooperation between Muslim extremists and Fascists ever since the founding of the Nazi movement in the 1920`s. For all of their differences, Muslim extremists and Nazis have always been united by a common group of beliefs and...

China's Latin influence is growing, general says China is taking advantage of a U.S. influence vacuum in Latin America because of aid cuts, the commander of the Southern Command says. By PABLO BACHELET pbachelet@herald.com WASHINGTON - The head of the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command Wednesday warned that China was increasing its influence among Latin American militaries, and partly blamed a policy that cuts military aid to countries that refuse to exempt U.S. citizens from International Criminal Court jurisdiction. In his first testimony before a House panel, Army Gen. Bantz Craddock, who heads the United States Southern Command, offered an unusually...

ASUNCION, Paraguay - Thousands of Paraguayans chanting "Justice! Justice!" crowded a cemetery Friday to say farewell to former President Raul Cubas's daughter, who was found dead this week after being kidnapped five months ago. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Daughter of Former Paraguayan President Found Dead Hundreds more lined streets of the capital, reaching out to touch the hearse carrying the body of Cecilia Cubas. Police on motorcycles led the funeral cortege. Her father, president from August 1998 to March 1999, was driven from power by deadly street riots and turmoil set off by the assassination of his vice president.

The story was about as buried as possible last September, given the dateline Asunsion, Paraguay. A former president's 31-year-old daughter was kidnapped by unknown criminals. As often happens in Latin countries, authorities were powerless and the public was angry. The fact that she was a president's daughter wasn't lost on them. It signaled that the government could not protect itself any more than the public could, and indeed was as vulnerable as any citizen. So the Paraguayans came out in their thousands, desperately protesting against the kidnappers, holding pictures of the victim and telling them to stop. It's another sad...

Mercosur Thursday, 17 February Former President's Daughter Found Dead. The daughter of former Paraguayan President Raul Cubas Grau was found dead, months after she was abducted by heavily armed gunmen. Attorney General Oscar Latorre said the body of Cecilia Cubas, 32, had been unearthed from a tunnel behind a house on the outskirts of Asuncion and identified through dental records. ``Preliminary studies show that the body is that of Cecilia,'' Latorre said on Radio Mil. There was no immediate word on the cause of death and officials said an autopsy would be performed. Cecilia Cubas was seized in a commando-style...

Bogotá. The supposed assistance given by Colombian guerrillas to the kidnappers of the daughter of the Paraguayan ex-president is further proof of the international tentacles of the rebels who finance themselves through criminal activities, said Colombia’s Minister of Defense, Jorge Alberto Uribe. "This only confirms the fact that Colombian narcoterrorist groups are not merely Colombians, they have roots and presence in every country", warned Uribe, who was visiting Holland, according to AP. "I was just with the people at Europol – the European police- and I saw four or five cases which involved people from these groups, especially" from the...

A survey of several Latin American countries in August found that 39 percent of Paraguayans believe democracy is the best form of government. Only Guatemalans are more disillusioned with their democratic leaders, according to the poll by the Chilean firm Latinobarmetro.

Dot # 1: A Growing Threat in the Tri-Border Area of South America. (Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America. A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, July 2003.) Since the early 1980’s, Arab terrorists have been sending thousands of their cohorts to the almost inaccessible jungle and mountain region between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (known as the TBA, Tri-Border Area or La Triple Frontera). Terror training camps and arsenals have been established, virtually out of the reach of local law enforcement or defense forces; and...

In this gritty border town known as a haven for drug smugglers, arms dealers and counterfeiters, stacks of money change hands in the open on every corner and thousands of people each day stream across Friendship Bridge into Ciudad del Este. They carry packages on their backs, in wheelbarrows or on carts, and border police stop few. Such chaotic scenes give life to the city's reputation of lawlessness and U.S. officials' description of the tri-border area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet as a key South American point for Islamic terrorist fund raising to the tune of $100 million a...

"Estar en la final puede dar un poco de alegría y satisfacción a nuestros compatriotas, que todavía están muy afectados por la tragedia", dijo Gamarra. "We are in the final to give a little bit of happiness and satisfaction to our fellow countrymen, that are still very affected by this tragedy Gamarra said (Captain of the Team).

I would bet they are glad UDAY and Saddam are gone now huh?!?

<p>Asuncion, Paraguay, Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Paraguayan prosecutors suspect Arab shop owners in a border town long known as a haven for smugglers have raised at least $50 million for a Lebanese-based terrorist group in the last four years.</p> <p>Three merchants in Ciudad del Este, a city on the border with Brazil and Argentina that's packed with shops selling pirated goods, allegedly funneled proceeds from store sales and charitable donations to Hezbollah, a guerrilla group backed by Syria and Iran that has launched attacks in Israel, said Carlos Calcena, a Paraguayan prosecutor.</p>

Hundreds of people were left to die inside a blazing supermarket after security staff locked doors to prevent customers from running out without paying, it emerged today. Initial reports suggested as many as 340 people were killed when the fire tore through a large shopping centre in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion after an industrial propane tank exploded. Police have charged the store's owner Juan Pio Paiva and his son Daniel with homicide after they allegedly ordered security personnel to lock down every exit. Firefighters had to batter down the locked main entrance to the complex before they could reach...

SUPERMARKET FIRE KILLS 124 - ESTIMATE At least 124 people have died after a fire swept through a supermarket on the outskirts of Paraguay's capital Asuncion, the country's police chief said. "They are still taking bodies out of the supermarket," Paraguay's police chief Humberto Nunez told Reuters. More Follows...

Al Qaeda and Hezbollah Plot a Dangerous Alliance By Tom Knowlton In an interview with The Sunday Times of London on Dec. 15, 2002, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat unwittingly provided the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism with a major insight into the evolving strategy of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network. Arafat asked Times interviewer Marie Colvin, "Why is Bin Laden talking about Palestine now? Bin Laden never, not ever, stressed this issue. He never helped us. He was working in a completely different area and against our interests." Arafat gave the interview after statements attributed to al Qaeda's...

One Coin, Two Sides <>P> By Greg Buete Published 01/03/2003 Deep in South America two terror fronts are colliding. While fundamentally dangerous apart together they are capable of producing terror attacks against the West in both greater magnitude and frequency than ever before. The region is called the Triple Border. It is a lawless region between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil that supports a community of 30,000 Muslims, many of them radical expatriates of the Lebanese civil war and aligned with Hezbollah. As Jeffery Goldberg of the New Yorker discovered, Hezbollah, an Iranian backed Lebanese terrorist group responsible for over 300...

Building better military-to-military ties topped the agenda as Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers met with Paraguayan leaders here today. Myers met with Paraguayan President Duarte Frutos, Defense Minister Roberto Gonzales and Gen. Jose Key Kanazawa during a three-hour visit. Myers is on a tour through South America to build military relationships in the region. The chairman arrived in the middle of a torrential downpour that flooded streets in this capital city. He met with Duarte at the Ministry of Defense, where the president was celebrating Army Day. Myers said his visit is meant to further bilateral...

Muslim terror groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, have recently stepped up their efforts to consolidate their power in distant areas of Latin America, particularly in the triangle of borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, say Israeli and American security sources. The sources in Israel confirmed information provided last week by the deputy chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Peter Pace, who told the Armed Forces Committee in the House of Representatives that the area is a center for trade in drugs, weapons, money laundering, forgery, and activity that supports Islamic terror in Latin America. According to Israeli...

Tri-Border Area Hotbed for Crime-Terror Nexus, Hezbollah Firmly EstablishedIn the frontier town of Ciudad del Este, in February 2003, Paraguayan state security officials raided a store owned by Ali Khalil Mehri, a 32-year old businessman of Lebanese descent. They recovered Hezbollah propaganda and documentation of money transfers to Canada, Chile, the U.S. and Lebanon totaling more than $700,000. Also found were fundraising forms for an organization in the Middle East called Al-Shahid, which is dedicated to the "protection of families of martyrs and prisoners." After a thorough investigation, Paraguayan prosecutors charged Mehri with selling millions of dollars of pirated software...