On June 24, a Joint House Committee hearing on Venezuela’s Sanctionable Activities made a concerted effort to shed light on President Hugo Chavez’s dangerous ties to Iran. Representative Connie Mack (R–FL) and others expressed a deep-seated concern that the sanctions recently placed on the government-controlled oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela …
June 10 marked an important step forward in Colombia’s efforts to build enduring democratic security and pursue justice: Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, signed the Victims’ and Land Restitution Law. In the past, violence perpetrated primarily by paramilitary groups and guerrillas displaced 4 million Colombians, forcing them off as much …
On May 28, former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned home nearly two years after the June 2009 actions that removed him from office for violations of the national constitution. Accompanied by Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicholas Maduro and delivered via Air Hugo Chavez, Zelaya was greeted by thousands of cheering admirers. …
With considerable prodding from Congress—especially from the new Republican majority in the House—the Obama Administration and Department of State announced on May 24 that it is placing Venezuela’s national oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) on its list of companies sanctioned for their work in helping expand Iran’s petroleum and …
The Berlin-based daily Die Welt published a news story on May 13 citing “Western security sources” who reported that Venezuela’s authoritarian strongman Hugo Chavez secretly met in February 2011 with the chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Air Force, Amir al-Hadschisadeh. The pair, according to Die Welt, finalized the location …
The record will show that the May 9 extradition by Colombia of Walid Makled Garcia to Venezuela constitutes a major lost opportunity for the Obama Administration to interrogate and prosecute a Venezuelan drug kingpin with close ties to high-level Venezuelan officials and to expose the depth of narco-corruption within the …
The government of Colombia has made it official that it intends to send drug trafficking kingpin Walid Makled to Venezuela rather than the United States. It is a disappointing decision by a close ally in the international effort to combat illicit drugs and transnational crime. A major crime catch has …
On April 5, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa rashly declared the U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges persona non grata. Hodges has been ordered to leave the country in short order. The U.S. State Department rightly called the action “unjustified.” The reason for Correa’s pique is the unauthorized release via WikiLeaks of a …
