New York Metropolis, United States – The allegations shocked the courtroom. Final week, a confidential witness in a high-profile prison case alleged that an Israeli embassy participated in a money-laundering scheme linked to the illicit commerce of cocaine.
It was a significant twist within the trial of Juan Orlando Hernandez, a former Honduran president now dealing with costs of collaborating in a “violent drug-trafficking conspiracy” whereas in workplace.
On the witness stand sat a convicted drug trafficker, going by the pseudonym Luis Perez. Initially from Colombia, Perez appeared in a United States district court docket in New York to testify towards Hernandez, whom he accused of being concerned in drug trafficking operations.
However because the defence workforce cross-examined Perez about his relationship with Hernandez, he revealed one other alleged participant within the scheme: the Israeli embassy in Colombia.
“We labored with officers on the Israeli embassy,” Perez informed defence lawyer Raymond Colon in Spanish whereas on the stand. “The lady who transported cash for us from Honduras to Colombia was an official within the Israeli embassy.”
Perez, who was affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel, accused the unnamed official of laundering between $100m and $150m between 2008 and 2010.
Israeli embassy officers in Colombia declined to remark for Al Jazeera’s story. And Perez’s allegations couldn’t be independently verified.
However specialists informed Al Jazeera the testimony raised wider questions on Israel’s involvement in Latin America — and the way authorities and drug smuggling within the area have intertwined.
Authorities officers on trial
Perez, by his personal admission, trafficked 200,000 kilogrammes (441,000 kilos) of cocaine from Colombia to northwest Honduras over a interval of seven years, beginning in 2008.
His consumers allegedly included Mexican drug lords like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, each leaders within the Sinaloa cartel.
However in 2015, Perez turned himself in to US authorities, in change for a decreased jail sentence. Although it was not clear why he turned himself in to US authorities, he mentioned that he left as a result of “the US and Honduran authorities began surveilling folks closest to us.”
He served 65 months for conspiring to import cocaine into the USA, down from a attainable sentence of 135 months — greater than 11 years.
He has since acted as a cooperating witness for US prosecutors, who defend his id for his security. He beforehand testified within the 2022 trial towards former Honduran congress member Fredy Najera, who was accused of “working a large-scale narcotics trafficking organisation”.
Nájera has since pleaded responsible and was sentenced to 30 years in jail. Perez was launched as “Alexander Monroy-Murillo” on the time of the trial, a Sinaloa strongman working in Honduras.
In each the circumstances of Najera and former President Hernandez, Perez accused Honduran officers of looking for marketing campaign contributions in change for his or her participation within the drug smuggling.
Najera, as an example, was mentioned to have used his authorities workplace to tip off Perez every time a police operation threatened his cocaine enterprise.
As for Hernandez — a conservative president popularly recognized by his initials JOH — US prosecutors say he remodeled Honduras right into a “narco-state”, partnering with “among the world’s most prolific narcotics traffickers to construct a corrupt and brutally violent empire”.
He was extradited to the US in 2022, shortly after finishing his second time period in workplace.
Hernandez, nonetheless, has pleaded not responsible to the drug trafficking and weapons costs he faces. Earlier this week, he, too, appeared on the witness stand, refuting any allegations of wrongdoing.
When requested if he took bribes from figures like El Chapo, Hernandez replied merely: “By no means.” The prosecution has since rested its case.
By means of diplomatic channels
In his testimony in the course of the Hernández trial, Perez made it clear that the previous president had nothing to do with the Israeli diplomatic official who allegedly transported drug cash.
As an alternative, he described the unnamed worker as utilizing her baggage to maneuver the cash from Honduras to Colombia, on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel.
“To launder the cash, we moved it in a diplomatic briefcase utilizing the diplomatic passport of an official working on the Embassy of Israel in Colombia,” Perez informed the jury.
This occurred over a number of shipments, Perez alleged. Colon, the defence lawyer, pressed him to specify what number of occasions the journeys occurred.
“I can’t give an actual quantity,” Perez replied. “However it occurred many occasions.”
In change for collaborating within the money-laundering scheme, Perez mentioned the official acquired “3 % of the cash they moved”.
The defence has sought to painting witnesses like Perez as unreliable, motivated to testify for decreased sentences in their very own prison circumstances.
One of many defence legal professionals, Renato Stabile, informed the jury in his opening assertion, “You’re going to listen to from quite a lot of devils.”
Help to teams with cocaine ties
The allegations, whereas unproven, weren’t a shock to Alexander Avina, a historian of Mexico and Latin America and professor at Arizona State College.
Avina has researched alleged Israeli connections to drug networks in Central America, and he pointed to an extended historical past of overseas intervention in Honduras.
“Honduras has had a detailed relationship with Israeli army and arms sellers since at the least the late Nineteen Seventies,” Avina informed Al Jazeera.
On the time, Honduras was in turmoil. Tensions have been simmering with the neighbouring nation of El Salvador, and a collection of army leaders had taken the Honduran presidency by means of coups, although corruption scandals in the end toppled a lot of them.
The presidency of Common Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, for instance, got here to an finish within the 1978 “Cocaine Coup”, after his authorities was accused of collaborating in drug trafficking.
In the course of the tumult, Avina defined that Israeli army trainers and advisors helped Honduras’s safety forces perform bloody campaigns towards leftists and dissidents.
Aviña additionally identified that the Israeli authorities additionally supplied weapons, advisors and logistical help to the army regimes in neighbouring Guatemala.
Beginning within the Nineteen Sixties, Guatemala was enmeshed in a decades-long civil battle, which led to a genocide of Indigenous folks. The United Nations has estimated that greater than 200,000 folks have been killed.
Going through strain over human rights abuses in Central America, the US authorities collaborated with Israel to produce its allies within the area, even when it couldn’t achieve this immediately.
A New York Occasions report from 1983 described how Israel, “on the request of the USA”, was sending weapons to Central American international locations by means of Honduras.
Avina additionally famous that Israel has a historical past in Colombia as nicely, serving to to coach members of the United Self-Defenders of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary with hyperlinks to cocaine trafficking.
“Israel has performed a dying squad counterinsurgent position all through the Americas for the reason that Nineteen Seventies,” Avina mentioned.
“Medicine kind a part of that counterinsurgency, as a result of authorities forces have traditionally relied on narcos to do their soiled work.”
Shut relations below Hernandez
In newer many years, Israel and the US have maintained shut ties in Central America, together with with President Hernandez.
The previous president was a key ally within the US’s regional “battle on medication”, and he had a private relationship with Israel: He studied there within the Nineteen Nineties as a part of a world improvement programme referred to as MASHAV.
The Israeli authorities touted him as “the primary MASHAV graduate to grow to be a head of state”.
Hernandez continued his heat relationship with Israel whereas in workplace. Underneath his presidency, Honduras turned one of many first Latin American international locations to maneuver its embassy to Jerusalem, a controversial transfer seen as denying Palestinian claims to the town.
As allegations piled up about his ties to drug trafficking rings, Israeli media reported that Hernandez even requested Israel to assist stop his extradition to the US.
Journalist Cristian Sanchez has been attending Hernandez’s trial on behalf of the Professional-Honduras Community, a civil society organisation centered on exposing corruption. He, too, was struck by the allegations in regards to the Israeli official within the court docket proceedings.
“For the general public within the viewers,” Sanchez mentioned, “it was impactful to listen to that an individual within the Israeli embassy would lend themselves to kind a part of the money-laundering scheme of the Sinaloa cartel.”
In his view, the allegations are a part of a wider pattern of state establishments turning into complicit within the drug commerce.
“What the testimony exhibits is that the extent of infiltration of drug traffickers has gotten to its highest ranges, with an ex-president being judged for narco-trafficking — and with a diplomat from the federal government of Israel in Colombia concerned.”
