{"id":16020,"date":"2018-09-23T01:22:34","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T01:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16020"},"modified":"2018-09-23T01:22:34","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T01:22:34","slug":"hezbollah-financier-arrested-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16020","title":{"rendered":"Hezbollah ‘financier’ arrested in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Brazilian police arrested a fugitive who the United States<\/a> accuses of being the financier for the Lebanese group Hezbollah<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Assad Ahmad Barakat\u00a0was arrested in Foz de Iguazu, a city in the border region between Brazil, Argentina<\/a> and Paraguay, according to police.<\/p>\n

He has frequently faced accusations of illegal activity in the region – known as the Triple Frontier – which is also considered a haven for smuggling, trafficking and counterfeiting.<\/p>\n

In 2004, the US Department of the Treasury said Barakat was one of the most influential members of Hezbollah, which the US considers to be a “terrorist” organisation, and accused him of using his businesses in the tri-border area as fronts for raising funds for the group.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barakat, a Lebanese national, has been wanted by Paraguay<\/a> since late August on charges of falsifying documents, Brazil’s police said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Brazil’s supreme court authorised Barakat’s arrest, saying his case met the requirements for an arrest and possible extradition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Brazilian police, Argentine authorities froze assets belonging to Barakat and his associates after they were suspected of laundering some $10m in a casino on the Argentine side of the border.<\/p>\n

Barakat was previously extradited from Brazil to Paraguay in 2002 and returned to Brazil<\/a> upon his release in 2009.<\/p>\n

It was not clear whether Barakat will again be extradited to Paraguay following Friday’s arrest.<\/p>\n

Terrorism in Triple Frontier<\/h2>\n

US authorities and others alleged<\/a> the lawless border region between the three countries is a hotspot for support and funding of armed groups.<\/p>\n

The Treasury Department ordered a freeze on Barakat’s US assets, and in 2006 it branded him as a “global terrorist”, including his name on a list of people in the Triple Frontier it believed were financing Hezbollah. US companies and citizens are prohibited from financial dealings with Barakat.<\/p>\n

In 2001, he told The Associated Press news agency he was a Hezbollah sympathiser, but denied supporting terrorism.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah is a political party and armed group based in Lebanon and backed by Iran<\/a> that operates across the Middle East.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was accused of maintaining an “operational presence” across Latin America<\/a> and in the United States, said a US State Department report on terrorism<\/a> published this week.<\/p>\n

According to the Counter Extremism Project, an NGO, Barakat arrived in Paraguay in the mid-1980s having fled Lebanon<\/a> during the country’s bloody civil war<\/a>, and was also involved in planning Hezbollah’s military operations – including the\u00a01994 bombing<\/a> of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brazilian police arrested a fugitive who the United States accuses of being the financier for the Lebanese group Hezbollah.\u00a0 Assad Ahmad Barakat\u00a0was arrested in Foz de Iguazu, a city in the border region between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, according to police. He has frequently faced accusations of illegal activity in the region – known as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}