Chavez: Giving Up on Terrorism or Just Doing it Himself?
By Andrew Cochran
After Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez brusquely told FARC to give up their decades-long fight, Doug Farah wondered aloud whether he was "cutting his losses" or whether Chavez is "immersed in some hidden game that has little or nothing to do with what he is actually saying." Maybe now we know the answer, and it's the latter. Blogger "Fausta" sent me this translation of a piece by Latin American journalist Patrica Poleo about Chavez's Do-It-Yourself program, through which he trains terrorists through the Interior Ministry, with the help of Hezbollah:
"Presently young Venezuelans are being recruited for training in Lebanon.
Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela's vice-Minister of the Interior, along with others affiliated with Hezbollah, such as Lebanon-born Gahzi Nasserddine currently the Business Liaison at the Venezuelan embassy in Damascus, along with [his brother by surname] Ghasan Atef Salameh Nasserddine (a) Abu Ali, are in charge of recruiting young Venezuelan Arabs affiliated to the PSUV [Chavez's own Venezuelan Socialist Party], to be sent to South Lebanon for combat training in Hezbollah camps.
The purpose of the training is for preparing the youths for asymmetrical war against the United States."
Poleo provides other detials of Chavez' alleged efforts to work with Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups from the Middle East, actually naming members of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Hezbollah who are currently in Venezuela.
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