On March 17, 1992, a Ford F-100 panel van drove in front of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and blew up a massive vehicle bomb of 224 pounds of high explosives, leaving 23 people dead and several hundred injured. Back then, no one thought that Iran and Hezbollah had the capability to carry out a massive terrorist attack halfway around the world from Lebanon.
Two years later, on July 18, 1994, Iran and Hezbollah did it again but this time directly targeting and attacking a Jewish Community Center called the “AMIA” killing 85 people, mostly Argentine and other Latin American nationals. Thirty years later, there are still skeptics as to the presence and penetration of Iran and Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere.
Today, at a press conference in Buenos Aires, the security minister of the Republic of Argentina, Patricia Bullrich, and her director of criminal intelligence, Ricardo Ferrer Picado, provided critical evidence to Iran and Hezbollah’s long arm of terrorism in Latin America.
According to the Argentine Security Ministry, Hussein Ahmad Karaki, a 56-year-old Lebanese national, is the leader of Hezbollah’s Unit 910 or External Security Organization (ESO) in Latin America and was the operational commander of the two bombings in Buenos Aires in the 1990s. Using several alias such as “Abu Ali,” “Rami,” or “Saad Az Aldin,” and multiple cover identities and documents from Colombia and Venezuela, Ahmad Karaki continually traveled from Lebanon to Latin America after the terrorist attacks in Argentina to oversee other operations in the region.
More recently, it is reported that Ahmad Karaki is the mastermind of a foiled Hezbollah terrorist plot against Israeli and Jewish targets in Brazil.
More recently, it is reported that Ahmad Karaki is the mastermind of a foiled Hezbollah terrorist plot against Israeli and Jewish targets in Brazil, and possibly other countries on the continent. This terrorist action was thwarted last November by the Brazilian Federal Police only one month after the horrific October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel in Gaza.
Operation Trapiche I and Trapiche II are law enforcement efforts led by the Brazilian Federal Police with partner agencies around the world. The joint antiterrorism operation led to the arrest of two Brazilian nationals of Middle Eastern descent tied to organized crime and shut down several tobacco shops in the Minas Gerais state of Brazil and cryptocurrency exchanges in Belo Horizonte, allegedly used for terror-finance.
Crime-terror convergence is a topic carefully studied by the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) and the Department of Defense, who published two books on the topic at the National Defense University. It is also studied by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute that published an extensive report on crime-terror convergence earlier this year authored by Christian Vianna de Azevedo, a Supervisory Special Agent with the Brazilian Federal Police.
Hezbollah has been called the gold standard of crime-terror convergence conducting both terrorist operations and serving as a transnational criminal organization, fusing the two worlds together through fixers, facilitators, and financiers. Hussein Ahmad Karaki is the architect of Hezbollah’s convergence in transnational organized crime and international terrorism in Latin America.
Similar crime-terror plots to Operation Trapiche have been thwarted in other Latin American countries in recent years, where Iran and Hezbollah hired local criminal actors to carry out complex operations. In 2021, Colombian authorities saved two Israeli businessmen in Bogota from being kidnapped and killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force (IRGC-QF) who outsourced the operation to an Iranian felon and two Colombian cutouts.
On August 10, 2024, Colombian authorities arrested Mahdy Akil Helbawi, the son of another Hezbollah ESO operative Amer Mohamad Akil Rada, who is suspected of being involved in the 1990s terrorist attacks in Argentina.
More recently, in March 2024, the Peruvian police arrested another Iranian felon for planning a similar assassination plot against an Israeli businessman, working through two Peruvian hitmen. Hussein Ahmad Karaki is suspected to have masterminded these two foiled crime-terror operations in South America.
On August 10, 2024, Colombian authorities arrested Mahdy Akil Helbawi, the son of another Hezbollah ESO operative Amer Mohamad Akil Rada, who is suspected of being involved in the 1990s terrorist attacks in Argentina. Akil Helbawi, alias “Turco” and “Jhon,” was arrested in Cucuta, along the Colombia-Venezuela border, and charged with multiple counts of illicit finance and environmental crimes for a money-laundering scheme that enriched Hezbollah using charcoal exports from Colombia to Lebanon, Kuwait, Israel, Oman, and the UAE.
The Akil Rada Clan is closely connected to the Venezuelan government. Samer AKIL RADA, the brother of Amer Mohamad, is also a Hezbollah ESO operative and managed many cryptocurrency schemes in Venezuela to the benefit of the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Hezbollah.
Hussein Ahmad Karaki, the Hezbollah ESO leader for Latin America, maintains close ties to the Maduro regime and established a cover identity and legend in 2004 from Barquisimeto, Venezuela under the name “David Assi” allowing him to travel throughout Latin America. Ahmad Karaki has at least one other cover identity in Colombia under the name “Alberto Leon Nain” used to travel to Foz do Iguaço, Brazil in the Tri-Border Area to oversee operations for the 1994 AMIA attack in Argentina.
Under the leadership of Minister Patricia Bullrich, the Argentine Ministry of Security has been leading regional counterterrorism efforts in Latin America to neutralize various international terrorist networks in and around Argentina, most notably Hezbollah and the IRGC-QF. On July 12, 2024, Argentine added Hamas to its terrorist registry called RePET and officially designated them a foreign terrorist organization, adding to the terrorist designation of Hezbollah from 2019. At least five countries in Latin America have designated Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization, and more countries are investigating Hezbollah’s illicit activities in the region.
Israel’s ambassador to Costa Rica recently warned that Hezbollah has operational bases in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia. The Argentine government has previously stated that Iran’s increased presence in Bolivia is of concern and announced today a bilateral conversation with the Plurinational State of Bolivia to discuss this matter. Bolivia was the target of a failed Hezbollah terrorist plot in 2017.
Through the work of the Ministry of Security’s Dirección Nacional de Inteligence Criminal (“National Criminal Intelligence Directorate” or DNIC) and its recently launched Centro de Mision Antiterrorista (“Antiterrorism Mission Center” or CMA), under the leadership of Minister Patricia Bullrich and President Javier Milei and his entire national security team – Argentina is becoming the regional antiterrorism leader in Latin America.
