Venezuela picks up some FARC drug dealers?

Reuters:

Venezuelan authorities have arrested a suspected drug lord and arms smuggler with paramilitary links wanted in the United States on charges of trafficking cocaine, the government said on Sunday.

Police arrested Hermagoras Gonzalez close to the border with Colombia on Saturday, Venezuelan media reported. State television said 48 people it called paramilitary fighters had also been caught in the operation.

The U.S. State Department has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect, known as "Fatty Gonzalez.' It accuses him of smuggling large quantities of cocaine into the United States.

The State Department says Gonzalez ran the Guajira cartel in Colombia and also smuggled arms from Europe through Venezuela to support a paramilitary group fighting Marxist guerrillas in Colombia.

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This is a surprise. Venezuela has become a major transit point for FARC drugs headed for Africa and on to Europe. It could be that the discoveries on the FARC laptops has made it more difficult for the Venezuelans to ignore what is happening without risking indictment for participating in the drug trade.

The LA Times reports the bad news. Gonzales will be tried in Venezuela. That may be just another way of protecting him from prosecution in the US or Colombia. His cartel controlled about a third of the Colombian cocaine trade.

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That passage is said to be facilitated by the so-called Cartel of the Sun, a group of corrupt Venezuelan army and police officials named for the solar insignia on the uniforms of the Venezuelan national guard. Gonzalez's Guajira cartel is said to be closely associated with the guard.

Gonzalez, whose 230-pound, 5-foot-5-inch frame earned him the nickname "Gordito," or Fatso, was arrested Saturday at his ranch in Caja Seca, at the southern end of Lake Maracaibo.

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Meanwhile, drug traffic has quintupled in Venezuela since 2002, according to the former U.S. ambassador there. U.S. officials such as White House anti-drug czar John P. Walters have cited Venezuela's lax enforcement and corruption as reasons.

According to the U.S. State Department's annual drug report released last month, seizures of illegal drugs in Venezuela "dropped substantially in 2007 while seizures of drugs coming out of Venezuela by other countries, including the U.S. and United Kingdom, rose sharply."

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There is more. I suspect that Chavez may have been concerned about Colombia taking action against Fatty. I still do not have any confidence in justice in Venezuela with Chavez in charge. Whatever Chavez motives this does have to be an inconvenience to the FARC drug trade. Hat tip Fausta.