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COLOMBIA

Swede admits to FARC guns-for-drugs deal

A former Swedish night club owner held in the United States on suspicion of supplying weapons to Colombian guerrillas in exchange for cocaine, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in a US court.

Swede admits to FARC guns-for-drugs deal

Paul Mardirossian, a Swedish citizen and former owner of a string of clubs in the posh Stockholm neighbourhood of Stureplan, has been held in the United States since May after being arrested in Panama trying to sell weapons to an undercover agent.

On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to supply weapons to Colombian guerrillas in exchange for cocaine.

”Paul Mardirossian was ready, willing, and able to supply military grade weapons to people he thought were terrorists for the express purpose of harming Americans. In return, he would receive prodigious quantities of cocaine that would ultimately poison thousands of people and net him huge profits,” said US Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement on Tuesday.

According to his US prosecutors, Mardirossian met with undercover operatives of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in February 2010, under the assumption that they were representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Mardirossian then allegedly agreed to arrange the sale of military-grade weaponry to the FARC, including AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers, and ammunition, in exchange for “large quantities of cocaine”.

At a meeting in January, Mardirossian and a co-conspirator allegedly were told by a second DEA undercover operative that the weapons “were needed to attack a US military base that was currently under construction”.

He was arrested April 27th in Panama City shortly after coordinating the delivery of a weapons sample — a grenade launcher and AK-47 assault rifle — to an undercover officer in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to the prosecutors.

Mardirossian was remanded into custody in May in a federal court in New York and has been held without bail.

At first he pleaded not guilty to the charges, but has since changed his plea.

”Today’s guilty plea is the latest result of our ongoing efforts to dismantle the inter-connected networks of drug dealers and arms suppliers,” Bharara said on Tuesday.

The six charges include conspiring to engage in narco-terrorism (which could give him life in prison, with a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison), conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization (15 years), attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization (15 years), attempting to import five kilogrammes or more of cocaine into the United States (life, with a minimum of 10 years in prison), and money laundering (20 years).

Mardirossian is scheduled to be sentenced on May 12th.

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DRUG

Narco brothers ‘Benny’ and ‘Angel’ extradited from Spain to USA

Two Pakistani brothers have been extradited to New York to face charges that they conspired to smuggle heroin into America and sell missile launchers to Colombian rebels, prosecutors said.

Narco brothers 'Benny' and 'Angel' extradited from Spain to USA
The two men were extradited from Spain to face charges in the US

Hameed Chishti, 47, nicknamed Benny, and Wahab Chishti, 49, also known as Angel, were flown to the United States from Spain last Friday, more than a year after their arrest at American officials' request.

If convicted on all charges, they face between 25 years to life behind bars in an American prison.

They are charged with conspiring to commit narco-terrorism, to provide support to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), to import heroin into the United States and unlawfully sell missile launchers.

Prosecutors allege that the brothers agreed to sell heroin to people they believed were FARC, but who were actually undercover informants, thinking it would be smuggled into the United States.

In April 2014, the Chishtis allegedly arranged delivery of a one-kilo heroin sample to presumed FARC cronies in the Netherlands.

They then agreed to sell them weapons after the alleged FARC members claimed to want to buy Russian-made surface-to-air missiles to protect their drug-trafficking empire in Colombia.

After Hameed Chishti forwarded bank account details for payment for the missiles, the brothers were arrested in June 2014 in Spain, where they lived, prosecutors said.

They appeared before a US magistrate on Friday as prosecutors seek the extradition of two more defendants from Spain – delayed because they are seeking asylum.

The Chishtis “illustrate once again that drug trafficking and terror conspiracies often intersect, support, and facilitate each other's dangerous and potential deadly plots,” said Mark Hamlet, the Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in charge.

The United States declared FARC a terrorist organization in 1997.

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