Peruvian authorities have detained a Lebanese man in possession of explosives in the capital Lima. He had planned to “execute a major attack” against Jewish targets in Peru.
Security forces from the Counter-Terrorism Directorate raided Mohammad Amadar’s home in the city’s Surquillo district last Tuesday, finding detonators and TNT, Peruvian daily La Republica reported.
The Lebanese national is said to be a Hezbollah member and the country’s Counter-Terrorism Directorate had been tipped-off by “foreign intelligence agencies” that a member of the group had entered the country.
The Peruvian Interior Minister Daniel Urresti said in a statement that Amadar was linked to an “international terror organization.”
Other reports have said Amadar had “collected intelligence” on Jewish targets in Peru to “execute a major attack”.
Hezbollah maintains an important fundraising network in South America which is a popular destination for immigrants from Lebanon. The group does not hide its presence in South America.
A 2003 study by the Federal Research Division of the US Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency’s Crime and Narcotics Center concluded that “Hezbollah has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars from narcotics and arms trafficking, product piracy, and other illicit activities” in the relatively lawless Tri-Border Area where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet.
Hezbollah was founded by the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) soon after the 1979 revolution in Iran.
The New York Daily News reported in October 2013: Today, Hezbollah is no longer just a proxy of the Iranian regime; it is in a “strategic partnership” with that regime, as National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew Olsen put it. Or, in the words of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Hezbollah and Iran are in “a partnership arrangement . . . with the Iranians as the senior partner”.
In January 2014, the current Iranian regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif laid a wreath on the grave of Imad Mughniyeh, a principal leader and operative that served in Hezbollah’s military for several years.
Imad Mughniyeh was the main man behind the 1983 Beirut bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon.
In July 1987, the Iranian regime’s then-Minister of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Mohsen Rafiqdoost, said, “Both the TNT and the ideology which in one blast sent to hell 400 officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marines headquarters were provided by Iran”.
Rafiqdoost’s comments were published in the Tehran daily Ressalat on July 20, 1987.
