by Yoni Hersch and Israel Hayom Staff
Shiite terrorist group, four other crime syndicates are a "top transnational organized crime threats" the U.S. plans to target with tougher measures, Attorney General Jeff Sessions says
The United States on Monday designated Lebanon's Hezbollah and four other groups as international crime organizations.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions named
the Iranian-backed terrorist group, alongside Central American street
gang MS-13, Mexico's Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, the Sinaloa
Cartel, an international organized crime syndicate based in Mexico,
and Colombian drug cartel Clan del Golfo as "top transnational
organized crime threats" that Washington plans to target with tougher
investigations and prosecutions.
A special team of "experienced
international narcotics trafficking, terrorism, organized crime, and
money laundering prosecutors" will investigate individuals and networks
providing support to Hezbollah, Sessions said in a press conference.
"With this new task force in place,
our efforts will be more targeted and more effective than ever,"
Sessions added, explaining that in 90 days task-force members will
give him specific recommendations "to prosecute these groups and
ultimately take them off of our streets."
The United States has in the past imposed
several rounds of sanctions on Hezbollah and officials affiliated with
the Shiite group, which the State Department designated as a terrorist
organization in 1997.
AP
Sessions described the latest designations
as “our next steps to carry out President [Donald] Trump’s order to
take MS-13 and other [transnational criminal organizations] off of our
streets.
"Taking on transnational criminal groups
like the cartels is a priority for this president and for his
administration. The same day I was sworn in as attorney general,
President Trump ordered me to disrupt and dismantle these groups."
Session said the five organizations had
been identified by the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force, and the Justice
Department’s Criminal Division.
The special task force, headed by Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, will "coordinate our efforts and
develop a plan to take each of these groups off of our streets for
good," he said.
It will comprise specialized subcommittees,
each led by a prosecutor experienced in investigating and prosecuting
the target group.
The subcommittee on Hezbollah will be
headed by Ilan Graff, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern
District of New York overseeing the prosecution of two alleged
Hezbollah members, the first Hezbollah operatives to be charged with
terrorism in the United States, and staffed by members of the
Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team.
"Transnational Criminal Organizations –
whether they are gangs, drug trafficking cartels or terrorist groups –
are a scourge," Rosenstein said Monday. "They sow violence and sell
poisonous drugs. They bribe public officials and fuel corruption and
they terrorize law-abiding citizens."
Yoni Hersch and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/10/16/us-designates-lebanons-hezbollah-as-international-crime-%e2%80%8eorganization/
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