FARC allegations multiply, require vetting

By Jonathan Winer

Anyone trying to sort out the public allegations about FARC's global criminal reach can't be faulted for wondering how to distinguish between information and disinformation.

The latest account, out of the Bogota publication, The Spectator (El Espectador), begs for an early confirmation or discreditation in light of its implications for the globalization of terrorism and crime.

The piece alleges that British intelligence found the FARC commander killed in Colombia's cross-border raid on Ecuador last week had visited Romania earlier this year to negotiate the purchase of enough uranium to build a dirty bomb. According to the article, FARC commander Raul Reyes used a false name and a Venezuelan passport, to travel to Bucharest in mid-January to meet with a high-level member of the Semion Mogilevich organization. The article states that British intelligence concluded that the Mogilevich group had developed a working relationship with FARC that dated back a number of years and was also now working with Al Qaeda. According to the article, the Mogilevich group was also linked to the purchase of enriched uranium that disppeared from the Chelyanbinsk-70 nuclear storage site in the Urals. The article contends that the UK intelligence agency concluded that FARC wanted the material to build a dirty bomb to kill Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

The Chelyanbinsk allegation is iffy at best. In 1998, the Russians reported they had thwarted an effort by workers at the Chelyanbinsk facility to steal 18.5 kilos of uranium in an incident confirmed by the Russian government two years later.

Mogilevich himself was arrested by the Russians on January 23, 2008 in connection with a reported tax avoidance and money laundering scheme -- small potatoes by comparison to the vast set of criminal activities with which he has in the past been linked, including nuclear smuggling.

Putting Mogilevich, one of a handful of the most notorious post-Soviet mobsters, together with FARC and Al Qaeda on allegations regarding nuclear smuggling is about as close to a comic book fantasy about the nexus between crime and terrorism as one could get. It's like a bad-guy All Star event. It's a great story. But did it actually happen?

The sooner we separate reality from fantasy here, the better.

TrackBack