Brazil’s Federal Police (PF) detained another suspect in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday evening on charges of participating in a recruitment scheme to allegedly create a terrorist nucleus in Brazil linked to the Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah. Last Wednesday, the first day of Operation Trapiche, the FI arrested two more suspected members of the network, one of them when he disembarked at Sao Paulo International Airport after returning from a trip to Lebanon.
The suspect, arrested this Sunday, was at a kiosk on the outskirts of Copacabana beach in the south of the city and was surprised and offered no resistance. His identity has not been revealed as this is PF standard and as the investigation is being conducted in secret, although there are other suspects who have not yet been arrested.
Chief among them is the Syrian naturalized in Brazil, Mohamad Khir Abdumajid, against whom an attempt was made last Wednesday, in the first stage of the operation, to obtain an arrest warrant, but who was not arrested because he was outside Brazil, probably in Lebanon. For the PF, Mohamad is the leader of the terrorist core that was created in Brazil, and it is he who will lead the attempt to recruit Brazilian extremists.
As for the goals of the terrorist core supposedly being created in Brazil, the little information that is known is very contradictory. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the terrorist nucleus was intended to provoke a wave of terrorist attacks against people and organizations of the Jewish community in Brazil, but Brazilian authorities confidentially said they doubted this version.
Now there seems to be no doubt that Hezbollah was indeed trying to create a terrorist nucleus in Brazil made up of Brazilians, so the federal police took action and arrested the suspects, but in Brasilia they believe that any terrorist attacks by the group will be carried out in other South American countries, not in Brazil. Hezbollah is funded by Iran, a country with which Brazil has very strong ties, as with almost all Arab and Muslim countries, and it makes no sense for the government in Tehran to encourage or even allow attacks on Brazilian soil.
Author: Domingos Grilo Serrinha This correspondent in Brazil
Source: CM Jornal
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