The 'terrorist gang' of a hairdresser, a pingpong player and an alleged mercenary

Gustavo Pardo works behind the counter of the Gran Hotel España, in a 90-year-old building that saw times of greater splendor, a few meters from Avenida de Mayo. He has been a manager and janitor for two decades, a job he inherited from his father, picking up and hanging room keys on a large wooden cabinet that he has behind his back. “You can imagine that I saw everything pass by… a number of strange passengers,” he tells LA NACION. But there was one guest who, without having even set foot in the hotel, caught his attention. So much so that she motivated him to make a call.

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That call is the origin of a novel story that includes an alleged retired mercenary from the French Foreign Legion, a Syrian-Colombian pingpong player and a hairdresser, today entangled in a case of alleged international terrorism and the three, prisoners. According to Patricia Bullrich, there are serious suspicions that they were plotting an attack against a target linked to Israel and were waiting for a package with explosives from Yemen. In Justice they do not rule out that it is all a fable, but they move forward. “We're going to wait, see if anything comes out of the call exchanges,” said an official working on the case.

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Pardo says that when the hotel's WhatsApp received the reservation from a Colombian born in Syria, he immediately thought that, with that dual nationality, he was a character that his friend would undoubtedly be interested in. The blond, a man from Catamarca who claims to be a freelance journalist, but who says that he also “provided services” to “intelligence and security” agencies in different countries around the world and proudly shows how Spanish media presented him as the “Madrid mercenary” who, while he was an employee, of a Spanish company in Cameroon “freed 55 girls from the clutches of Boko Haram terrorists.” He says he even worked for the French Foreign Legion.

“El Rubio” stayed for two months at the Gran Hotel España and became friends with Pardo, who in addition to being a hotel manager – he says – is a journalist. “A super respectful guy, loyal to his people. He told me the stories of him in the desert. We would go have a coffee on the corner, we would chat,” says Pardo de El Rubio, 54 years old. Pardo relates that he could not believe it when he saw on television that they had arrested Rubio and Chasan Naem Chatay, the Syrian-Colombian he had told him about.

In between, he did know, two weeks after that talk with his former guest, that the Argentine Federal Police was after Chasan. A group of agents showed up at the hotel on December 29. “They carried out an entire operation to arrest the alleged terrorist here. The Police came to set up all the wiring. Finally he did not arrive, they grabbed him when he landed in Ezeiza,” says Pardo.

As for Rubio, they would have detained him because he claimed to be an inorganic agent of the United States embassy when he appeared before the Police to tell the story of the alleged terrorist. According to the cause, this relationship with the United States does not exist.

The Syrian-Colombian traveler has dual nationality, on January 1 he turned 68 and claims to be a table tennis coach – he says he even competed in international competitions, one of them, a South American championship in Argentina. He lived part of his life in Venezuela and would also have a passport from that country. He declared in court that his plan was to settle in Buenos Aires and open a table tennis club. According to El Tiempo, from Colombia, he owns a perfume sales store called Comercializadora Chatay. in a gallery in Bogotá, and his neighbors used to see him arrive by bicycle to open the business.

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The third detainee is a hairdresser who worked two blocks from the Gran Hotel España, at Rivadavia 919, at the Rubi hair salon. All a few blocks from the Israeli Embassy, ​​which fostered the hypothesis of the alleged terrorist act in the making.. The hairdresser, Ramón Alberto Domínguez, also knew Rubio because he cut his hair, according to what the two said and the owner of the hair salon confirmed. El Rubio is the one who introduced him into the plot. According to his own account, he combined an alleged package that they were going to send to the hairdresser with the Colombian-Syrian's reservation at the hotel and told the Special Investigations Department of the PFA that the package would be “an order coming from Yemen”. With that complaint plus an anonymous call and a call to the Israeli Embassy from a gendarme – who said he had information received from Colombia – the case begins.

The hairdresser swears that it has nothing to do with the planning of an attack, that he does not know Chasan and that the supposed package never existed: it was the promise of someone who wanted to scam him virtually. He himself had denounced it in court on November 1, almost two months before the Syrian-Colombian entered the country.

The Ministry of Security made the case public and Bullrich He spoke about the topic on January 2. She said that three people who came from abroad had been detained, that the three arrived in Argentina “on different flights,” that they had “crossed identities, crossed passports,” that “they were waiting for a package that came via the delivery systems via Yemen,” and stated: “The package is under investigation”.

His statements do not coincide with what appears in the case, as LA NACION learned from different officials with access to the case. Court sources said that there is also no evidence in the file of the “intelligence information” provided by “elements of the United States and Israel” that – according to Bullrich – would have reinforced suspicions that an attack was being plotted. LA NACION contacted the Ministry of Security to consult about this case, but did not receive a response.

The existence of the alleged commission was never proven, prosecutor Franco Picardi warned in the file, who last week ruled in favor of the release of Domínguez, the hairdresser, but the judge decided that he should remain imprisoned. The prosecutor maintained that Domínguez's story coincides with all the evidence he provided, which shows that they wanted to defraud him by making him believe that they would send him a gift and asking him for money to release the supposed shipment.

Domínguez related that about four months ago he contacted a woman on Facebook with whom he began to chat and get to know each other; that she told him that she was North American and that she wanted to visit Argentina; that she announced to him that she would send him a gift and, for that, she asked him for her address. Since Domínguez lives with her daughter, she thought it best to give him the job of the hair salon where she sometimes worked. But he says that shortly afterward a man called him – early one morning, around 4 o'clock – and told him that he had the shipment, but that $900 was needed to get it out of the airport and he asked him to pay it. He said that he refused and that they insisted, that later a woman called him telling him that he had said he would receive him, that they had his address. Domínguez stated that he blocked the contact and, on the recommendation of a lawyer client, made the complaint.

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The story of the package reaches Justice because El Rubio went to the Rivadavia hair salon between Suipacha and Carlos Pellegrini (he lives around the corner) and asked what was happening in the life of Domínguez, his hairdresser. It was then when the owner of the hair salon told him what had happened to her and showed him the WhatsApp with the documentation of the supposed package, which said it came from “Yemen” and weighed 35 kilos. According to El Rubio's statement, he found the shipping information added to the arrival in the country of a man born in Syria curious because they were two countries with problems with Israel. Always according to his story, he then told a known police officer and he told a gendarme (one hypothesis is that it is the same one who took the case to the Israeli Embassy), to see if they could track the package (which Justice has already tracked and confirmed that the shipping documentation is false, the prosecutor's office warned). El Rubio also said that he sent an email to the Mossad and tried, without success, to contact the AMIA.

The gendarme who contacted the Israeli Embassy also referred to Chassan and the Gran Hotel España. He then said that his source was a Colombian police officer. Asked later in court, the gendarme never revealed who this supposed police officer was, sources in the case reported. According to the file, the gendarme spoke of two other men who were supposedly entering the country – one of them, Lebanese – but only Chassan's arrival was confirmed.

Rubi, owner of the hair salon that bears her name, can't believe the mess she found herself in. They raided his premises and, to enter, the Police broke the lock. At first they only informed him that it was due to a complaint (“I thought it was someone who was complaining that I had cut him badly, imagine… and it seemed strange to me because the clients always leave happy,” he said). She confirmed in court that she had told Rubio about the supposed shipment that Domínguez was expecting, that he had asked her if he could receive it at the premises. According to Rubi, she only drew her attention to the episode of the package that Domínguez had told her that if they asked about him, she would deny knowing him.

The Justice Department is awaiting the results of the tests ordered to determine if this alleged terrorist cell is just a misunderstanding or the case should move forward. A gigantic accusation weighs on the three detainees: they are accused of “integrating a transnational criminal association of uninterrupted existence in the time that is dedicated to the organization and perpetration of terrorist attacks” that “rwould record activities in different countries in the region, in particular, Colombia, from where he would have organized the perpetration of an attack – presumably with explosives – on a property located in the area of ​​this city linked to the community.“Jewish faith.”

Last week, the case moved from the court run by María Servini de Cubría and the Picardi prosecutor's office, to the court run by María Eugenia Capuchetti and the Ramiro González prosecutor's office. Yesterday the hotel manager and the owner of the hair salon testified. Next week the procedural situations of the three accused must be defined. It will be resolved if they are prosecuted, dismissed or found to lack merit. The official defense office that represents them – whose head is Juan Martín Hermida, replaced these days by Hernán Silva – is betting that the hairdresser, who asked to be released when he testified in the investigation, will be released. He has a favorable opinion from the prosecutor's office. Today the Federal Chamber will make a decision.

By: Paz Rodríguez Niell
THE NATION, ARGENTINA
GDA

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