Brazilian, Bolivian police to join hands in fighting against organized crime

[Judi Lynn]

Brazilian, Bolivian police to join hands in fighting against organized crime
2009-02-19 10:42:02

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- The federal police of Brazil and Bolivia on Wednesday pledged their commitment to cooperating in actions against organized crime, especially involving drugs and weapons trafficking and money laundering.

An agreement, signed by Brazilian Federal Police Director Luiz Fernando Correa and Bolivia's National Planning Director General Wilge Obleas Espinoza, will be effective for a year and may be extended.

Under the agreement, both countries would exchange information about organized crime and data concerning specific laws on drugs and weapons trafficking, money laundering and the destinations of seized goods.

Bolivia has committed itself to launching operations to eradicate marijuana and cocaine crops, with logistic aid from Brazilian police. The country will also take part in a scientific study developed by the Brazilian Federal Police's Criminology Institute.

Brazilian forensic experts will also help to improve Bolivian forensic laboratories.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/19/content_10847393.htm

[Peace Patriot]

1. "...launching operations to eradicate marijuana and cocaine crops"??

This is not good reporting. Bolivia is on a path toward decriminalizing private herb use, and has already decriminalized the use of coca leaves (common in Bolivia, for chewing or making tea) as the sacred medicine plant of the indigenous. It is now protected by the Constitution itself. Bolivia also totally opposes eradication efforts that use toxic pesticides and harm small farmers in other ways. What Bolivia opposes are criminal gangs, major hard drugs traffickers and weapons traffickers. And the reason that Bolivia is joining with Brazil in efforts to control gangs and mafias is that the U.S. DEA was actually encouraging such criminal activity (according to statements by Morales) as well as funding/organizing fascist groups that rioted and killed some 30 unarmed peasants in September. Morales was compelled to throw the U.S. ambassador out of the country. The Bushwhacks retaliated by withdrawing all "war on drugs" funding. In this stalemate, Bolivia needs REAL help controlling gangsters and illicit trade--and is much better off getting it from Brazil--which will help reduce CIA, DEA and other Bushwhack plotting in Bolivia.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Bolivia's cocaine trafficking has always been connected to their REALLY right-wing people.

Here's just one short view:

Nazi Echo: Argentina, Death Camps & the Contras

By Marta Gurvich & Robert Parry

The tracks of secret financing for the Nicaraguan contra war may cross a troubling money-raising tactic passed on from Adolf Hitler's Nazis to their ideological heirs in Argentina: the liquidation of property from victims killed in death camps.

An investigation in Spain is examining evidence that an intelligence officer in Argentina's Dirty War was responsible for selling the property of Argentines after they were "disappeared" -- that is, taken to secret concentration camps and murdered. Money from the victims' property may have ended up in Swiss bank accounts maintained by Argentine military officers.

The Argentine intelligence officer accused of overseeing the property liquidations is Raul Guglielminetti. In closed-door U.S. Senate testimony in 1987, one of his accomplices also fingered Guglielminetti as the manager of a Miami-based money-laundering operation that funnelled tens of millions of dollars in Bolivian drug money to the Nicaraguan contras and to other right-wing paramilitary operations in Latin America.

The extent of the contra connection to various Bolivian drug smuggling operations reportedly is one of the surprises contained in the still-secret volume two of an internal CIA investigation into contra-cocaine trafficking. But the CIA so far has refused to release the 600-page volume two. CIA spokesmen say the agency eventually may release an unclassified summary, but will likely keep much of volume two secret.

~snip~
According to Sanchez-Reisse, the money operation's first major activity was funnelling drug proceeds into a 1980 coup to overthrow an elected center-left government in Bolivia. That new government had offended Bolivia's powerful cocaine barons, including Roberto Suarez, then one of the biggest traffickers in the world.

Suarez and his key ally in the Bolivian army, Gen. Luis Garcia Meza, struck back by organizing a coup d'etat with Argentine assistance. Sanchez-Reisse said Suarez provided the money that was funnelled through Guglielminetti's financial network.

Using ambulances, the Argentine generals delivered weapons and other military equipment to right-wing Bolivian paramilitary forces.

The money for the 1980 coup came from "drug traffickers were interested to overthrow the government of Bolivia," Sanchez-Reisse testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1987.

The money "was shipped from Bahamas to United States. ... It was money belonged to people connected with drug traffic in Bolivia at that time, specifically Mr. Roberto Suarez in Bolivia."

Explaining how he knew the money came from cocaine trafficking, Sanchez-Reisse said, "I know that Mr. Roberto Suarez doesn't make his money growing peanuts."

Besides the weapons from Argentina, the Bolivian putschists got help from an international band of ex-Nazis and neo-nazis led by Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon for his work in Hitler's Gestapo.

In July 1980, the coup overthrew the Bolivian government and slaughtered many of its supporters. Some victims were tortured by Argentinean experts flown in to demonstrate their expertise.

The putsch, which became known as the Cocaine Coup, installed Garcia Meza and other drug-connected military officers who promptly turned Bolivia into South America's first modern narco-state. The secure supply of Bolivian cocaine was important to the development of the Medellin cartel in the early 1980s.

More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor24.html

http://www.kalipedia.com.nyud.net:8090/kalipediamedia/historia/media/200808/08/hisbolivia/20080808klphishbo_42_Ies_SCO.jpg

Gen. Luis Garcia Meza

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Just saw a documentary last night recorded in the last day or two on the History Channel on this Nazi rat line to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, etc. focusing on Adolph Eichmann, and a great big blond dufus I can't remember, Klaus Barbie (Butcher of Lyons) and Dr. Mengele, the unparalleled sadist. That's just a few of the ones who infested South America immediately after WWII, completely assured they were absolutely safe, among ideological brethren in the dictators there, and don't forget, they were all assisted in their flight and in their lives in South America by the U.S. Government, particularly the C.I.A.