Showing posts with label drug trafficking. Show all posts

So WHO Controls the Illegal Drug Trade in the US?: Florida Police Department Laundered Tens of Millions for International Drug Cartels

Tom Hunker: One of the "officers" at the center of the money laundering scheme.

By Justin Gardner
The village of Bal Harbour, population 2,513, may have a tiny footprint on the northern tip of Miami Beach, but its police department had grand aspirations of going after international drug traffickers, and making a few million dollars while they were at it.
The Bal Harbour PD and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office set up a giant money laundering scheme with the purported goal of busting drug cartels and stemming the surge of drug dealing going on in the area. But it all fell apart when federal investigators and the Miami-Herald found strange things going on.

The two-year operation, which took in more than $55 million from criminal groups, resulted in zero arrests but netted $2.4 million for the police posing as money launderers. Members of the 12-person task force traveled far and wide to carry out their deals, from Los Angeles to New York to Puerto Rico.

Along the way, the small-town cops got a taste of luxury as they used the money for first-class flights, luxury hotels, Mac computers and submachine guns. Meanwhile, the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs were buying all sorts of fancy new equipment.

Besides these “official” uses of the money, confidential records obtained by the Miami-Herald show that officers withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars with no record of where the money went.

“They were like bank robbers with badges,” said Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who taught undercover tactics for the U.S. State Department. “It had no law enforcement objective. The objective was to make money.”

The operation, which was not fully reported to federal authorities, funneled millions of dollars to overseas criminals and interfered with investigations being carried out on known money launderers.

The latest revelations show that at least 20 people in Venezuela were sent drug money from the Florida cops, including William Amaro Sanchez, the foreign minister under Hugo Chavez and now special assistant to President Nicolas Maduro.

They wired a total of $211,000 to Sanchez, even while the U.S. government was investigating Venezuelan government leaders involved in the drug trade. Instead of reporting their knowledge of Sanchez to federal agencies, the cops went on laundering money, taking their cut, and all the while aiding Sanchez in his machinations, which likely included political corruption.

Four other Venezuelan criminals and smugglers were major recipients of the millions being wired from the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriff’s Office, including a figure tied to one of the largest drug cartels in the hemisphere.

These actions violated strict federal bans on sending illegal money overseas, and the Florida cops never investigated the backgrounds of the people receiving their laundered drug money.

“I can’t think of a more podunk town than Bal Harbour — not in a bad way. But in the sense that these cops would have otherwise been stopping traffic or shooting radar,” said Ruben Oliva, who has represented alleged narco-traffickers since the 1980s. “In reality they were being launderers. The minute they started doing busts, it would have been over.

“This is like a movie. You’ve got these guys and they’re flying all over. They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m in the big leagues.’ I’ve seen every kind of law enforcement money-laundering investigations. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s really one for the ages.”

After the Department of Justice busted the Bal Harbour PD for misspending seized money to pay police salaries, the Miami-Herald began deeper investigations and found a much bigger pool of money that was never noticed by the feds. Soon after that, the ambitious sting operation—which was really just a money-making scheme—began to fall apart.

“The Miami Herald gained unprecedented access to the confidential records of the undercover investigation, reviewing thousands of records including cash pickup reports, emails, DEA reports, bank statements and wire transfers for millions of dollars. The inquiry found:

Police routinely withdrew cash — thousands at a time — totaling $1.3 million from undercover bank accounts, but to this day there are no records to show where the money was spent. “In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chief Overton said.

Bal Harbour officials say they cannot find receipts for hundreds of thousands in expenses, including five-star hotel bookings, dinners that ran up to $1,000 and scores of purchases like laptops, iPads, electronic money counters, flower deliveries, and even iTunes downloads.

While posing as launderers, police delivered nearly $20 million to storefront businesses in Miami-Dade to launder the money for drug groups — gathering critical evidence against the business owners — yet took no action against them. Years later, the businesses are still open, some still suspected by federal agents of laundering for the cartels.”

Cash deposits to SunTrust Bank totaling $28 million do not appear anywhere in police records. It’s no coincidence that the operation was launched “at a time law enforcement agencies across Florida were looking to boost their budgets during one of the state’s toughest economic periods.”

“We had to find a revenue stream,” said Duane Pottorff, chief of law enforcement for Glades. “It allowed us to have resources we wouldn’t normally have.”

Federal authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have launched probes into the Bal Harbour police, which will surely confirm the rampant abuses of power. However, the fact that these types of shady operations, carried out with the help of agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can occur at all is even more troubling.

Government creates a black market of drugs and blood money through prohibition, then under the War on Drugs it grants itself the power to break the law and get involved in money laundering operations. While the professed goal is to “sting” the bad guys, government rakes in millions upon millions of dollars to further bolster its prohibition and war on drugs.

The War on Drugs is the real scheme that should be investigated.

Reprinted with permission from Free Thought Project

WHO Was Behind America's Crack Epidemic? — It Certainly Wasn't the 'Boyz in the Hood'

Big Time Drug Wholesaler "Freeway" Rick Ross (left), his CIA cocaine connection, Oscar Danilo Blandon (middle) and Reporter Gary Webb. The US Congress outlawed the use of government money in the funding of the CIA's mercenary army which was being used to attack the government of Nicaragua. So the CIA trafficked massive quantities of cocaine to
dealers like Rick Ross and used the proceeds to fund it's proxy army known as the "Contras." The result was the crack epidemic. Rick Ross and Oscar Blandon both admitted that at their "peak" they were moving over 200 pounds of cocaine
a week in the United States. US intelligence agencies have used drugs to fund their operations long before there was a CIA. Gary Webb blew the lid off of the story and was promptly attacked and ostracized by his fellow "journalists" working for big-time newspapers like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Some of the reporters who attacked Webb's reputation have since apologized, but not before Gary Webb was found with two .38 caliber bullets in his head on December 10, 2004. The coroner ruled Webb's death a "suicide." —Ronald David Jackson

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Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of the Reporter Who Exposed Its Role in the Crack Epidemic

With their cocaine smuggling the CIA managed to kill two birds with one stone: 1) They funded and armed right-wing terrorist in Latin America, 2) They crippled the black community and destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of black people.

Jeremy Renner stars as Gary Webb, in the new film, Kill The Messenger. (Screen
capture from YouTube video)

By Ryan Devereaux
Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.

The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.

Kill The Messenger - Trailer

These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga — information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.

RELATED STORY: The CIA and Drugs, Inc - A Covert History — Drug Trafficking as Strategic Intelligence

On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry.

Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.

(Dujmovic’s name was redacted in the released version of the CIA document, but was included in a footnote in a 2010 article in the Journal of Intelligence. Dujmovic confirmed his authorship to The Intercept.)

RELATED STORY: EXPOSED - Reporter Who Revealed the True Role of the US Government in the Crack Epidemic Was Discredited By Big Media With CIA Help

Webb’s troubles began in August 1996, when his employer, the San Jose Mercury News, published a groundbreaking, three-part investigation he had worked on for more than a year. Carrying the full title “Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion,” Webb’s series reported that in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in order to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign. The secret flow of drugs and money, Webb reported, had a direct link to the subsequent explosion of crack cocaine abuse that had devastated California’s most vulnerable African American neighborhoods.

Derided by some as conspiracy theory and heralded by others as investigative reporting at its finest, Webb’s series spread through extensive talk radio coverage and global availability via the internet, which at the time was still a novel way to promote national news.

Though “Dark Alliance” would eventually morph into a personal crisis for Webb, it was initially a PR disaster for the CIA. In “Managing a Nightmare,” Dujmovic minced no words in describing the potentially devastating effect of the series on the agency’s image:

The charges could hardly be worse. A widely read newspaper series leads many Americans to believe CIA is guilty of at least complicity, if not conspiracy, in the outbreak of crack cocaine in America’s cities. In more extreme versions of the story circulating on talk radio and the internet, the Agency was the instrument of a consistent strategy by the US Government to destroy the black community and keep black Americans from advancing. Denunciations of CIA–reminiscent of the 1970s–abound. Investigations are demanded and initiated. The Congress gets involved.

Dujmovic acknowledged that Webb “did not state outright that CIA ran the drug trade or even knew about it.” In fact, the agency’s central complaint, according to the document, was over the graphics that accompanied the series, which suggested a link between the CIA and the crack scare, and Webb’s description of the Contras as “the CIA’s army” (despite the fact that the Contras were quite literally an armed, militant group not-so-secretly supported by the U.S., at war with the government of Nicaragua).

[...]

But newspapers like the Times and the Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of U.S.-backed proxy forces in international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive. Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webb’s reporting. While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News, one of the 17 referred to it as the “get Gary Webb team.” Another said at the time, “We’re going to take away that guy’s Pulitzer,” according to Kornbluh’s CJR piece. Within two months of the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the L.A. Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitor’s breakout hit than comprised the series itself.

The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb’s reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” and Dujmovic in “Managing a Nightmare” cites the CIA’s success in discouraging “one major news affiliate” from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding policies in order to discredit the series. “For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual — which is a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individual’s alleged CIA ties.”

RELATED STORY: USA Today - Still Not Too Late to Attack Gary Webb — News Outlet Still Covering For CIA Drug Trafficking

The document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moved in favor of the CIA, a trend that began about a month and a half after the series was published. “That third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story,” Dujmovic wrote, citing “[r]espected columnists, including prominent blacks,” along with the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, The Weekly Standard and the Washington Post. The agency supplied the press, “as well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media,” with “these more balanced stories,” Dujmovic wrote. The Washington Post proved particularly useful. “Because of the Post‘s national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a ‘firestorm of reaction’ against the San Jose Mercury News.” Over the month that followed, critical media coverage of the series (“balanced reporting”) far outnumbered supportive stories, a trend the CIA credited to the Post, The New York Times, “and especially the Los Angeles Times.” Webb’s editors began to distance themselves from their reporter.

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Saudi Arabia To Behead Teen Who Protested at Age 15 — While 'Royal' Drug Traffickers Go Free

Saudi Arabia is a vicious exporter of mass terror that is dominated by a "royal" family drenched in blood and hypocrisy.

Abdullah al-Zaher (left) is about to be executed for alleged participation in a protest when he was 15-years-old. You can
bet the "royal" knucklehead, Saudi Prince Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud (right) who was recently arrested with two tons of drugs at a Lebanese airport, won't get the same treatment. In 2004, Prince Nayef bin Fawwaz Al Shalaan was indicted
in the United States for drug trafficking. He was once involved in a 4000 lbs shipment of cocaine. Despite Saudi Arabia's "strict and severe" anti-drug laws Al Shalaan went free.— Ronald David Jackson

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Abdullah al-Zaher: Saudi Arabia is about to behead a teenage boy for attending a protest aged 15

Campaigners say Abdullah is the youngest in a group of juvenile offenders sentenced to death as part of a crackdown on political dissent

By Adam Withnall
Saudi Arabia is believed to be on the brink of executing a teenage boy who was arrested at the age of 15 for attending a protest.

RELATED STORY: Drug Smuggling, Rape and Torture - These 5 Saudi Royals All Did Things Commoners Would be Executed For

Campaign group Reprieve told The Independent Abdullah al-Zaher, who is now 19, was the youngest in a group of juvenile offenders put on death row as part of a ruthless crackdown on political dissent in the conservative kingdom.

Previously held alongside fellow juvenile offender Ali al-Nimr, whose case sparked outrage around the world, Abdullah has now been moved to solitary confinement at a new facility and could be beheaded at any moment.

RELATED STORY: Saudi Arabia Beheaded 151, Says It Will Behead Another 50 — Will Any of Them Be the Drug Smuggling 'Prince'

In a last-ditch attempt to save their son’s life – and in spite of the danger of repercussions from the Saudi authorities – Abdullah’s parents have gone public with his story.
Speaking to the Guardian, his father Hassan al-Zaher issued a desperate appeal. He said: “Please help me save my son from the imminent threat of death. He doesn’t deserve to die just because he participated in a protest rally.”

A spokeswoman for Reprieve said Abdullah was arrested “for being in the area of a protest” in March 2012, beaten on the spot by police and tortured.

His family and lawyers believe he was forced to sign a document without knowing its contents, and which later was used as a “confession” in the closed trial against him.

Saudi government-aligned media outlets have been carrying reports in the past couple of weeks suggesting a mass execution of 52 prisoners is due to take place imminently.

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ISIS Threatend With 'Elimination' by Mexican Drug Cartel Leader — For Interfering With Drug Shipments

Virtually every brutal act committed by ISIS was virtually invented by the drug cartels of Mexico. There's no level of savagery that ISIS would bring to the game that couldn't be outdone by the cartels.—Ronald David Jackson

Is A Battle between Mexico's drug cartels and ISIS being engineered by CIA spooks?: Drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican high-security prison in July 2015.

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Drug Kingpin El Chapo Guzmán Reportedly Threatens To Retaliate Against ISIS

By Dolia Estevez
Fugitive Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has reportedly threatened to eliminate ISIS if it continues to destroy his drug shipments to unspecified Middle East countries that go through the terrorist group’s so called “caliphate,” a website called cartel.blog reported Thursday.

RELATED STORY: Mexican Cartels Are Worse Than ISIS - Big Media Hides This — To Demonize Muslims And Cover up What's Happening On America's Border

In a harshly-worded encrypted email addressed to ISIS head Abu Bakd Badhdadi, the head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel reportedly said: “My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a whore who tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them.”

Women and men are prepared for beheading before they are chopped
up and thrown into vats of acid. Just like ISIS, the cartels force victims
to give a speech before they are killed —Ronald David Jackson (Screen
capture from video)

He added: “You [ISIS] are not soldiers. You are nothing but lowly p *ssies. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”

News of the alleged threat, purportedly issued by El Chapo through one of his sons, was first reported in the U.S. by cartelblog.com. Cartel.blog, a little known website created last year to report on the Mexican cartels and the “failed war on drugs,” claims the email was leaked by an unnamed “Mexican blogger” with “intimate ties” to the Sinaloa Cartel.

ISIS, a fanatical messianic group, opposes drug consumption and apparently has been destroying
shipments found passing though territory it controls in Iraq and Syria.

The e-mail has not been authenticated. DEA spokesperson Rusty Payne told me via e-mail: “I don’t have any information to weigh in either way.”

Guzmán, who DEA has called the world’s #1 drug criminal and greatest criminal drug threat to the U.S., escaped in July from a Mexican high-security prison through a hole in his shower connected to a clandestine tunnel. The 17 months Guzmán was in jail (he was arrested early 2014) did nothing to diminish his prominence in the global illegal drug market.

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Crazed Jihadis Get Their 'Fighting Spirit' From Drugs — Supplied By the Saudis

The crazed jihadis (left) are getting their 'fighting spirit' from drugs supplied by the likes of Saudi 'royals' like Saudi Prince Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud (right) he was recently arrested at an airport in Lebanon with two tons of Captagon pills.

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Drug Crazed Soldiers Complicate Syrian War, As Drug Sales Bring Cash to Combatants

By Phillip Smith
The private jet at the Beirut airport wasn't just carrying a Saudi prince one night in October—it was loaded with two tons of Captagon, the Middle Eastern amphetamine that not only fuels the nightlife in Saudi Arabia, it's also a favorite of combatants in Syria's brutal civil war.

RELATED STORY: Drug Smuggling, Rape and Torture - These 5 Saudi Royals All Did Things Commoners Would be Executed For

The prince's bust by Lebanese customs officials opened a media window on a Mideast amphetamine habit that is, by all accounts, huge. Manufactured in clandestine labs in Lebanon, and increasingly, in war-torn Syria, the drug is flooding the region, with the UNODC World Drug Report estimating that half a billion Captagon pills flood into Saudi Arabia alone each year.

Captagon has been around for a long time, but it's getting renewed attention for its role in the Syrian conflict. Manufactured since the 1960s, the stuff was banned regionally in the 1980s because of its addictive and anti-social properties. Now, Captagon is little more than a generic name for mixtures of amphetamine and caffeine or amphetamine and ephedrine, but it's still the kind of stimulant drug beloved by fighters who desire the energy, alertness and sense of well-being it brings.

It's "the drug fueling the conflict in Syria," the BBC reported, while the Washington Post called it, with just a touch of hyperbole, "the tiny pill fueling Syria's war and turning fighters into superhuman soldiers."

The Post notwithstanding, Captagon will not turn fighters into the Hulk, but as a stimulant, it can reduce hunger, sharpen focus and allow fighters to keep going for days on end. The problem is, doing speed for days on end tends to make people jumpy and paranoid—not the kind of person you necessarily want holding heavy weapons.

Still, numerous media reports have detailed Captagon use by fighters all on sides in Syria, from government troops to ISIS jihadis.

"So the brigade leader came and told us, 'This pill gives you energy. Try it,'" one ex-fighter told the BBC. "So we took it the first time. You feel physically fit. And if there were 10 people in front of you, you could catch them and kill them. You're awake all the time. You don't have any problems. You don't even think about sleeping. You don't think to leave the checkpoint. It gives you great courage and power. If the leader told you to go break into a military barracks, I will break in with a brave heart and without any feeling of fear at all — you're not even tired."

But Captagon's role in the region's wars is not limited to keeping fighters jacked up. It's also a money maker for the combatants, and it's big business. Lebanese authorities seized more than $200 million worth in one month, the country's top drug enforcement official told Time. Much of it is coming out of Syria, the official said.

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Saudi Arabia Beheaded 151, Says It Will Behead Another 50 — Will Any of Them Be the Drug Smuggling 'Prince'

Saudi Arabia says it will behead 50 people in addition to the 151 it has already beheaded. Will those slated for behead-
ing include Saudi Prince Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud (right), who was recently arrested with two tons of drugs at an airport
in Lebanon? (Left Photo by E. C.)

By Bill Law
Saudi authorities appear set in the next few days to carry out a series of beheadings across the country of more than 50 men convicted of terrorism offences. Among those facing execution are three young men who were juveniles when they were arrested.

The publication earlier this week of an article in the newspaper Okaz, which has close links to the Saudi Ministry of the Interior, has convinced families of the accused and concerned human-rights organisations that the executions are imminent.

Sources have said that the plan is to behead the men in several cities across the kingdom, most likely after Friday prayers.

Already this year Saudi Arabia has carried out at least 151 beheadings but these would be the first that deal with allegations of terrorism. Last year a total of 90 were executed but none were for terrorism offences. It is believed that seven of the condemned men are Shia from the region of Al-Awamiyah in the oil-rich Eastern Province. Saudi Shia have long protested over discrimination and mistreatment by the Sunni central government.

A leading Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al Nimr, arrested in a shootout with security forces in 2012, is among those thought to be facing execution.

The mothers of five Shia released a letter on Wednesday alleging that their sons, three of whom were juveniles at the time of their arrest, were subjected to torture while in custody. The letter says: "We affirm that our children did not kill or wound anyone. The sentences were based on confessions extracted under torture, trials that barred them from access to defence counsel and judges that displayed bias towards the prosecution."

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Drug Smuggling, Rape and Torture: These 5 Saudi Royals All Did Things Commoners Would be Executed For

This is the Type of Garbage that the US has a Key MidEast Alliance With

Saudi Prince Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud: He was recently arrested with a massive amount of drugs at an airport in Lebanon - A screaming, bleeding, naked woman had to be rescued by neighbors who saw her trying to escape his
clutches by climbing an eight-foot fence in his backyard in Beverly Hills, California.

By David Ferguson
The recent arrests of two Saudi Arabian princes — one for smuggling literal tons of illegal drugs in his private plane and one for a series of sexually abusive incidents involving his employees — call attention to a long and august tradition of fabulously wealthy people from the highly religious Islamic monarchy acting in absolutely horrible ways.

On Monday, Saudi prince Abdel Mohsen Bin Walid Bin Abdulaziz and four associates were caught at the Beirut airport attempting to carry “two tons of Captagon pills” into Saudi Arabia as well as a quantity of cocaine.

Captagon is the brand name for fenethylline, a combination of the stimulants amphetamine and theophylline. Sources in the Middle East say Captagon is fueling fighters on both sides of Syria’s bloody civil war.

The Guardian said that the drug was first synthesized in the 1960s to treat “hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression,” but was ultimately banned as too addictive. It remains wildly popular in the Middle East, but virtually unheard-of anywhere else.

Last week, in Los Angeles, 29-year-old Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud was arrested on suspicion of “forced oral copulation” of an adult and other charges.

Al-Saud is accused by three anonymous female employees of going on a violent, debauched rampage in which he attacked male and female aides and house workers, forcing them to strip on command and perform sex acts against their will.

Last week neighbors spotted a naked, bleeding woman frantically trying to scale the 8-foot fence around Al-Saud’s Beverly Hills compound. They helped the woman escape and called police.

By Thursday Al-Saud — who is the son of Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah — was free on $300,000 bail.

The arrests echo other instances of wealthy Saudis running afoul of the law, including the case of 27-year-old Monsour Alshammari. Alshammari was apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border attempting to flee the country to escape prosecution on rape charges in Utah.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Alshammari is related to Saudi royalty and U.S. authorities say that if he is allowed to return to that country, they will lose the ability to extradite and try him.

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Saudi Arabia's family-controlled dictatorship flogs, cuts of hands, and chops off heads for what most would consider "minor" infractions. Yet you have a member of the dictatorship apparently trafficking in drugs and getting busted at a Lebanese airport. The drugs were said to be headed to Saudi Arabia — Is the "kingdom" providing the drugs for the drug-crazed ISIS fighters?

Abd al-Muhsen bin Walid bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud was detained at an airport in the Lebanese capital, Beirut,
while in possession of 24 bags and eight suitcases full of narcotics. (Picture: Supplied)

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Saudi Prince Detained in Lebanon After Drugs Bust at Airport

By HeraldSun
A SAUDI prince and four others were detained on Monday in Lebanon in the largest drug bust in the history of Beirut airport, a security source said.

RELATED STORY: ‘Terrified, Disorganized & High on Drugs’ - Brit Fighting for Kurds Describes IS Militants

Saudi prince Abdel Mohsen Bin Walid Bin Abdulaziz and four others were detained by airport security while allegedly “attempting to smuggle about two tonnes of Captagon pills and some cocaine,” a security source told AFP.

“The smuggling operation is the largest one that has been foiled through the Beirut International Airport,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

Captagon is the brand name for the amphetamine phenethylline, a synthetic stimulant. The banned drug is consumed mainly in the Middle East and has reportedly been widely used by Islamic State fighters in Syria.

RELATED STORY: Huge Bag of Drugs Found at Home of Islamic State Leader Accused of Drugging Troops to Boost Morale

Captagon manufacturing thrives in Lebanon and war-torn Syria, which have become a gateway for the drug to the Middle East and particularly the Gulf.

The pills have “the typical effects of a stimulant” and produce “a kind of euphoria — you’re talkative, you don’t sleep, you don’t eat, you’re energetic,” according to Lebanese psychiatrist Ramzi Haddad.

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Drug Smuggling, Rape and Torture: These 5 Saudi Royals All Did Things Commoners Would be Executed For

This is the Type of Garbage that the US has a Key MidEast Alliance With

Saudi Arabia's Hypocritical Family Dictatorship: Saudi 'Prince' Caught in Massive Drug Bust

Saudi Arabia's family-controlled dictatorship flogs, cuts of hands, and chops off heads for what most would consider "minor" infractions. Yet you have a member of the dictatorship apparently trafficking in drugs and getting busted at a Lebanese airport. The drugs were said to be headed to Saudi Arabia — Is the "kingdom" providing the drugs for the drug-crazed ISIS fighters?

Abd al-Muhsen bin Walid bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud was detained at an airport in the Lebanese capital, Beirut,
while in possession of 24 bags and eight suitcases full of narcotics. (Picture: Supplied)

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Saudi Prince Detained in Lebanon After Drugs Bust at Airport

By HeraldSun
A SAUDI prince and four others were detained on Monday in Lebanon in the largest drug bust in the history of Beirut airport, a security source said.

RELATED STORY: ‘Terrified, Disorganized & High on Drugs’ - Brit Fighting for Kurds Describes IS Militants

RELATED STORY: Huge Bag of Drugs Found at Home of Islamic State Leader Accused of Drugging Troops to Boost Morale

Mass Incarceration Takes A Blow: Obama Administration To Release 6,000 Inmates — Citizens Given Pointlessly Long Drug Sentences

Photo by blue cheddar.

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
The Justice Department is preparing to release roughly 6,000 inmates from federal prison as part of an effort to ease overcrowding and roll back the harsh penalties given to nonviolent drug dealers in the 1980s and ’90s, according to federal law enforcement officials.

The release is scheduled to occur from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, and will be one of the largest one-time discharges of inmates from federal prisons in American history, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing matters that had not been publicly announced by the Justice Department.

The Bureau of Prisons is arranging for many of the inmates to initially move into halfway houses, one official said.

In April, the United States Sentencing Commission created guidelines that reduced the penalties for many nonviolent drug crimes and made some of those changes retroactive. Officials said at the time that the move applied to at least 50,000 federal inmates sentenced under the previous guidelines.

The new guidelines were issued amid increasing support for an overhaul of sentencing. The United States has a quarter of the world’s prison population and both Republicans and Democrats agree that prison spending, which accounts for a third of the Justice Department’s budget, needs to be reduced. News of the prison release was first reported by The Washington Post.

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'I Stole Drug Money and Planted Evidence Too Many Times to Count' Says Ex-Police Officer

By AP
A disgraced ex-police officer testifying against his drug squad colleagues acknowledged Tuesday that he stole drug money, planted evidence and lied on police paperwork too many times to count.

Jeffrey Walker told jurors that the Philadelphia Police Department drug squad targeted white "college-boy ... khaki-pants types" who were "easy to intimidate."

That matches the description of some of the drug dealers who have testified at the six-week police corruption trial that the squad stole as much as $110,000 at a time during violent, no-warrant raids.

Lead defendant Thomas Liciardello always got a cut of the stolen money, while the others split "jobs" that they worked, Walker said. The city's police brass often celebrated the squad's work with splashy news conferences to announce large seizures.

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Detroit Police Beat Innocent Motorist and Plant Drugs in His Car

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"They liked that, as far as the bosses and supervisors were concerned. It made them look good. It was nothing but a dog and pony show," Walker testified.

More than 160 drug convictions have been overturned since Walker pleaded guilty and the others were named in a 26-count indictment. Scores of civil-rights lawsuits are pending over the arrests. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey has voiced his disgust with the squad's alleged crimes while continuing his effort to clean out and reform the 7,000-member department.

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Deputy Police Chief Arrested for Trafficking in Oxycodone, Heroin and Marijuana

The deputy police chief had a prior conviction for intent to distribute cocaine but that didn't stop the Fresno, California police department from hiring him

Keith Foster

By NICK CAHILL

A deputy police chief has found himself on the wrong side of a cell after a year-long investigation ended Thursday with federal agents arresting him for an alleged conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, heroin and marijuana.

Keith Foster, 51, a 28-year veteran of the Fresno Police Department, was arrested with three other people, including his relative Denny Foster.

Surveillance by federal agents caught Foster on several occasions picking up oxycodone and delivering the drugs to Randy Flowers, 48, according to the criminal complaint.

The FBI conducted the surveillance, wiretapping and other components of the investigation jointly with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In the complaint, ATF agent Sherri Reynolds describes communication between both Fosters regarding marijuana distribution.

In December Foster asked Denny Foster if he can "pick up some units for his boy," and Denny Foster responded that he could only if Foster distributed money into his bank account, the complaint says.

Two weeks later, federal agents intercepted a phone call between the relatives clarifying that Denny Foster had shipped a half-pound of marijuana to New Mexico and that Foster deposited $1,150 into a Wells Fargo bank account.

The complaint details Denny Foster's criminal past, including a 2005 conviction in Oregon for the intent to distribute cocaine and a January arrest in Merced County for possession of marijuana for sale.

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Jamaica's Marijuana Decriminalization: Will the Rest of the Caribbean Follow Suit?

“Ganja”, photo by Justin Schuck, used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.

By Janine Mendes-Franco
Jamaica has long been the Caribbean island that the developed world most associates with liberal marijuana use.

This perception might stem from the fact that the island's biggest global icon, the late reggae musician Bob Marley, was a committed Rastafarian, who routinely smoked herb as path to deeper spiritual awareness. In this sense, weed might seem as synonymous with Jamaica as reggae music, but despite tourists flocking from the Global North with dreams of spliffing up on a beach and feeling irie, cannabis use was illegal on the island until recently.

That all changed last month — quite fittingly the month of Marley's birth — when the Jamaican House of Representatives passed a law decriminalising possession of up to two ounces of marijuana. The new legislation also allows people to grow up to five plants for personal use, and guidelines are currently being established for the cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana and use of the herb for religious application.

The law has made Jamaica the first Caribbean nation to make the bold move of attempting to regulate cannabis use in a region where, in most cases, its illegality has not quelled consumption. Across the Caribbean, national justice systems are backlogged with minor possession offences that accomplish nothing more than sullying a young person's police record.

Jamaica joins a number of other countries who are pioneering this approach to dealing with marijuana use. In August last year, Global Voices published a story which suggested that decriminalisation could eventually happen across the Caribbean. Jamaica remains the single largest exporter of marijuana in the region.

Reaction to the news on Twitter was swift. There were several congratulatory tweets about the legislation, acknowledging the significance of the measure:

Some users of the microblogging service wondered what the benefits would be:

This Twitter user thought the move was long overdue…

…while others underscored the developed world's perceptions of the island:

In the Caribbean itself, however, some bloggers were surprised by the decision.
Rishona Campbell wrote in a post titled ‘Can Jamaica Profit from Marijuana Legalisation?':

This is a really surprising, but timely move by the Jamaican government. In spite of marijuana being so intrinsically tied into Jamaican culture, thanks to the Rastafarians, the laws of the country have prohibited its possession and use since 1913. [...]

It seems that Jamaica has grown hip to the changing climate globally in regards to marijuana decriminalization. In all honesty, I thought that this would have happened much sooner in Jamaica, especially when the success of weed tourism in the Netherlands proved that you could tolerate marijuana use, and not have society implode itself.

Interestingly enough, the Netherlands actually allots for a lesser amount, 5 grams, for personal use. However the Netherlands allows public use, and it is fully legal. Whereas in Jamaica (similar to the states of California and New York in the United States), it is simply decriminalized.

Her post went on to describe some of the ways in which she thought the island could reap huge profits from the harvest and sale of the drug, explaining that both medical marijuana and weed tourism could generate significant economic yields. She also added that Jamaica was in a unique position to capitalise on the “almost mythical marketing pull of all things marijuana-related”.

A pro-weed region?

On Facebook, many netizens echoed the opinion of Trinidad and Tobago-based Shaz Hudson, whose reaction to news of the legislation was:

we need to move with the times

And indeed, other jurisdictions are definitely taking notice. Trinidad and Tobago News Blog reported:

With Caribbean neighbour Jamaica making moves to decriminalise marijuana, University of the West Indies (UWI) Professor Emeritus Kenneth Ramchand is renewing his calls for marijuana to be decriminalised in Trinidad and Tobago for medicinal purposes [...] and pointed to a good argument for decriminalising for personal use in limited quantities.

Rhisona Cambell, continuing her post, noted:

St. Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago and Antigua all have leaders who have addressed the topic. They acknowledged at CARICOM meetings that Jamaica is a leader in this area and are watching to see how they can make similar legislative moves in their own respective countries. Perhaps this is the type of peer pressure that Jamaica needs in order to make the right moves to turn marijuana from a proverbial villain, to an economic friend.

Rising to new heights

Time will tell whether or not Jamaica has started the ball rolling in terms of the legalisation of marijuana in the Caribbean, but satirical blog The Late O'Clock News, which positions itself as ‘the only legitimate news source in the Caribbean' thought it would help the process along:

Trinidad and Tobago will become the second, but more important country in the Caribbean to legalize the growth, sale and lighting up of marijuana. The ‘Just Gimme D Light and Pass the Dro’ Bill of 2015 is hoped to be passed unanimously in the House of Representatives [in] April this year [...]

In between puffs the Minister stated ‘Of course we weren’t going to let Jamaica show us up like that. T&T has always been a leader in the Caribbean, and anything Jamaica can do we can do better!’

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Biessessar took full credit for the landmark legislation. During a press conference at the Diplomatic Centre the PM proudly proclaimed ‘I have always promised that your government would take our country to new heights but few predicted how high we aspire to be!’

The blog also humorously anticipated a ‘munchies'-related economic boom:

Many local businessmen in the food service industry (chiefly doubles and corn soup vendors) are looking forward to a sudden and rapid increase in revenue after the bill passes in Parliament. As one vendor in Arima said: ‘To put it bluntly, we go have reelll [real] people to feed cuz men will be coming out like mad to satisfy some food cravings. Trust I.’

Currently, the new law is generating a lot of ideas, from groups proposing a ‘Ganja Cooperative’ of Jamaican weed farmers, to marijuana aficionados imagining the future of pot tourism in the region.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

Narco Terrorists Now Using Drones To Bring Drugs Into US: Drone Crashes With 6 Pounds of Cyrstal Meth Near Border

Screen capture from CNN video.

By Nick Valencia
A smuggler's drone flying from Mexico crash-landed just south of the U.S. border city of San Ysidro, California, in a failed drug delivery this week, the Tijuana Municipal Police said.

The incident showed that smugglers aren't just going underground any more, using tunnels beneath the U.S.-Mexico border to transport drugs and migrants.

Now the smugglers are trying to do business by air, too, in unmanned aerial vehicles.

The drone was loaded with more than 6 pounds of the synthetic drug crystal meth, Tijuana police said.

RELATED STORY: Mexican Cartels Are Worse Than ISIS — Big Media Hides This -- To Demonize Muslims And Coverup What's Happening On America's Border

The drone crashed Tuesday night in a supermarket parking lot in Tijuana.

Apparently the smugglers became too greedy, authorities said.

The silver and black, six-propeller Spreading Wings S900 model was not able to withstand the weight of the load and crashed, police said.

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