Colombian authorities handed over Walid Makled (aka “el Turk”) to Venezuela early Monday morning, ending months of speculation about whether the accused drug kingpin would be sent to the US or back to his native Venezuela. The reasons for the extradition to Venezuela are many, among them the fact that Makled faces murder charges there, in addition to charges of money laundering and drug trafficking. In the US, he would have only been charged with cocaine trafficking. The case has also been central to a thaw in Colombia-Venezuela relations since Juan Manuel Santos took office last August.
As has been widely reported in recent months (the AP today being the most recent), much of the significance of the Makled case has come from the suspected trafficker’s claim that he colluded with and bribed dozens of officials in the Venezuelan military. (The Venezuelan officials Makled has accused unsurprisingly deny those allegations). As the Wall Street Journal discusses this morning, critics of Monday’s extradition contend Makled’s claims will be little-pursued by Venezuela’s judiciary. They also say the Venezuelan government will try to prevent Makled from speaking out publicly during his trial.
On those matters, it seems we’ll simply have to wait and see. What is known so far is that the Colombian government held off on Makled’s extradition until it received a diplomatic guarantee from Venezuela saying proceedings against Makled would respect basic human rights standards, most notably his right to a fair trial. According to statements made Monday by Venezuela’s deputy minister of Citizen Security, Néstor Reverol, Makled will be granted “due process” and “will also have the opportunity to be heard.”
While unrelated to the Makled case specifically, Monday’s extradition comes as another set of uncomfortable allegations reappear around the Chavez government. The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London is set to release a 240-page book on the FARC today, entitled “The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador, and the Secret Archive of Raul Reyes.” The book is based on the files retrieved from the computer of the late FARC commander, killed by the Colombian military in a controversial cross-border airstrike into Ecuadorean territory in 2008. While many of the documents in the book (and accompanying CD) have already been cited, there is some history here that Venezuelan officials are probably uninterested in rehashing. This morning the New York Times has the first news coverage to come out of the new book and searchable CD, highlighting what it describes as an often “cooperative” but also “rocky and at times duplicitous” relationship between certain elements of the Venezuelan government and the FARC going back as early as the year 2000.
The revelations come just weeks after the Venezuelan government detained Joaquín Pérez, a man whom Colombian officials allege to be a close ally of the FARC living in exile in Sweden. Perez has since been deported to Colombia at the request of President Juan Manuel Santos.
Today’s bullet points:
· Continuing in Venezuela, a meeting between President Hugo Chavez and his Brazilian counterpart Dilma Rousseff was been cancelled Monday, almost as quickly as it was scheduled. Just one day after media reports about the trip were released – outlining an itinerary that was to take Chavez to Brasilia, Quito, and Havana – the Venezuelan president said he’d be forced to postpone, citing an all-too-bizarre “wounded knee.” While Chavez and Rousseff met at the latter’s January inauguration, the two leaders have yet to hold official bilateral talks as was the quarterly custom during Lula da Silva’s tenure. By my count this is the third meeting between Chavez and Rousseff that has been cancelled in the last four months. The most recent cancellation came in late March when Rousseff postponed so that she could join Lula in Portugal.
· In Ecuador, on-going vote tallying shows much tighter than expected balloting during Saturday’s 10-question referendum. According to Reuters: “with 40 percent of ballots counted by Monday afternoon, the range of ‘Yes’ votes for the 10 questions was 44 to 49 percent compared with 41 to 44 percent for ‘No’.” Analysts do note that Correa’s margin of victory will likely grow as votes in certain rural areas where Correa’s support is strong have yet to be counted. Up-to-date vote totals from Ecuador’s electoral council can be found here.
· A day after the culmination of a four-day anti-drug war march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, President Felipe Calderon says he would be willing to meet with organizers of the protest movement. However, the president indicated once again that he has no plans to change his current military-backed strategy against Mexican cartels nor did he address one of Sunday’s principal demands: that public security secretary Genaro Garcia Luna be replaced. New poll numbers released this week show Calderon maintaining an approval rating over 50% (54% to be precise). On questions re: the drug wars, fifty percent of Mexicans say the president’s efforts in combating drug trafficking have been “good” or “very good,” up from 46% in November 2010. Reporting from the LA Times and CS Monitor.
· Meanwhile, at the US-Mexico border, a gun battle on Falcon Lake between Mexican marines and suspected Zetas traffickers left 13 individuals dead Monday. The violent encounter occurred after marines discovered a drug camp on an island in the border lake. In late September of last year U.S. citizen David Hartley is believed to have been gunned down on the lake. His body was never recovered. AP reports.
· A group of Central American migrants freed over the last month by Mexican authorities say immigration agents are responsible for pulling them off a bus in Tamaulipas and handing them over to criminal groups. According to reports the kidnapped individuals picked out the immigration officials from photos provided to them by federal investigators this week. AP reports. On a similar note in Juarez, controversial security chief Julian Leyzoala said this week that he believes ¼ of the city’s police are colluding with criminal organizations.
· The New York Times and Wall Street Journal both look at recent efforts of Mexican regulators to break up billionaire Carlos Slim’s Latin American telecom empire. Last month Mexico’s antitrust agency fined Slim’s wireless phone company, Telcel, $1 billion while the Mexican congress also recently approved new antimonopoly legislation that, according to the Times, “raises fines for monopolistic practices and permits prison terms for executives who have been found to engage in them.” Last week, Mexico’s Supreme Court continued the assault, closing a legal loophole that Slim had used to prevent lower tariffs.
· Colombia’s El Tiempo speaks with former Colombian foreign minister Maria Emma Mejía as she officially takes over as Secretary General of UNASUR this week.
· Competing claims from the Cuban government and Cuban rights groups regarding the weekend death of dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto in the city of Santa Clara.
· The Miami Herald with a fascinating look at how Baby Doc has settled back into a quite normal life in Haiti.
· BBC and the Wall Street Journal last week report on new regional foreign investment numbers released by the Economic Commission for Latin America last week. The new numbers show foreign investment growing by 40% in 2010, with China leading the pack, particularly in Brazil where 90% of the country’s foreign investment goes toward extractive industries.
· And finally, El Faro’s Carlos Dada sits down on the apparently quite damp front lawn of Julian Assange’s Ellingham Hall residence in the UK for an exclusive interview with the Wikileaks founder. El Faro will become the latest local media outlet to begin publishing US diplomatic cables obtained by the whistleblower website next week.
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