Information accessed by hackers who hacked into the system of the General Directorate of Military Counterespionage in Venezuela indicate that Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship would provide shelter for members of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, United Kingdom, Israel and other countries.
The revelation was made in an article this Tuesday (26) by the newspaper Israel Hayom, which had access to data collected by the Venezuelan hacker group Team HDP.
According to the Israeli newspaper, hackers reported that the invasion of the country’s Military Counterintelligence database was carried out with the help of former intelligence officers. The information indicates that members of Hezbollah entered Venezuela through the island of Margarita as Spanish-speaking students contemplated in “government studies programs”.
Also according to Israel Hayom, there are reports that members protected by the Venezuelan dictatorship are involved in arms and drug trafficking and in money laundering to finance terrorism – part of them are from the Maklad family, originally from the Syrian village of As- Suwayda, near the Jordanian border, and which would also be involved in strategic mineral trafficking and human trafficking. “The Maklad family has lived there (Venezuela) for four generations, but ties with Hezbollah were established not long ago,” a source told Israel Hayom.
It is not the first time that former Maduro dictatorship officials have revealed Venezuela’s ties to Hezbollah. In 2019, a dossier delivered to The New York Times by a former Venezuelan intelligence officer and confirmed by another gathered testimony from insiders who accused the current Minister of Petroleum and former Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami and his father of recruiting members from the Lebanese group to help expand spying and drug trafficking networks in the region.
A source in the Israel Hayom report pointed out that the minister is “directly linked” to the Maklad family, benefiting from “protection” and “immunity” to the point of turning Margarita Island into their “kingdom”.
Accused of corruption, money laundering and drug trafficking, El Aissami was added in 2019 to the US Customs and Immigration (ICE) most wanted list prepared by the Homeland Security Investigations Unit. In February 2020, the US Department of State offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
Strategic location
A report prepared last year by the American think tank Atlantic Council, dedicated to foreign affairs, revealed that Iran’s and Hezbollah’s support for the Maduro regime has increased in recent years.
“Venezuela’s strategic location in South America and at the crossroads of the Caribbean gives Iran and Hezbollah the ability to lessen their geographic disadvantage compared to the United States. To hide this relationship, (Hugo) Chávez and later the Maduro regime provided dual identities for those from the Middle East, building a clandestine network that provides intelligence, training, funds, weapons, supplies and know-how to the Maduro regimes and ( of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-)Assad”, highlighted the document.
According to the Atlantic Council, Lebanese-Venezuelan-Colombian clans are part of a transregional network that supports Hezbollah activities and provides a logistical base in Venezuela that allows the Maduro dictatorship and associated groups, including dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas expand operations.
In the think tank’s assessment, “Hezbollah helped the Maduro regime become the center for the convergence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, multiplying the logistical and financial benefits for both.”
On March 16, Cape Verde extradited to the United States the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, alleged Maduro’s figurehead. Saab has been detained in the African country since June 2020 and is accused of money laundering – in part for Hezbollah.
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