Political asylee numbers will soon skyrocket

Victims of repression by U.S.-supported fascist governments in Latin America will soon skyrocket as a result of the election of Colombian narco syndicate and death squad-linked Ivan Duque as president of Colombia. Many of those now seeking political asylum from Honduras and Guatemala are fleeing U.S.- and Israeli-supported right-wing regimes in those countries. Refugees from violence-plagued El Salvador are trying to escape from death squads that have their roots in U.S.-supported paramilitary forces propped up in that nation’s civil war in the 1980s. These asylum-seekers will soon be joined by those fearing for their lives in Colombia.

Duque defeated former Bogota mayor and leftist M-19 guerrilla leader Gustavo Petro on a platform of reneging on many of the stipulations in the peace accord worked out between outgoing president Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Santos received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

Duque wants to prosecute FARC members who were amnestied under the peace deal but whom Duque and his paramilitary allies consider to be criminals. A threat to round up enemies of Duque and his mentor, former president Alvaro Uribe, who is tied to the Medellin drug cartel, will result in several anti-rightists in Colombia, including Afro-Caribbean Colombians and labor activists, to head north for asylum in the United States.

Uribe, who now holds a seat in the Colombian Senate, is viewed as someone who will rule Colombia as the puppet master holding Duque’s strings. Uribe is mired in scandals stemming from his use of illegal wiretaps against his opponents and financial corruption arising from Colombia’s growing coca yield.

Duque also developed numerous contacts with right-wing Republican elements while working for the Inter-American Development Bank and attending both Georgetown University and American University in Washington, DC. Duque, who is 41, spent almost as much time in Washington as Colombia. Duque plans to re-instate the discredited “Plan Colombia,” a joint U.S.-Colombian effort to eradicate coca production in certain areas using U.S. private military contractors and Colombian paramilitary units, the latter linked to Uribe’s narco lord friends. Plan Colombia saw the U.S. and Colombia spray coca fields belonging to poor Colombian campesinos, while Uribe’s and Duque’s friends in the cartels grew coca and refined it into cocaine without interference from Bogota or the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored private military contractors.

A good portion of Duque’s support came from Colombia’s growing population of evangelical Christians, who are linked to parent evangelical operations in the United States. Working class traditional Roman Catholics, on the other hand, tended to favor Petro, who garnered 42 percent to Duque’s 54 percent.

Duque is also a fan of the Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, writing a book titled, “Machiavelli in Colombia.” Duque’s fascination with Machiavelli is shared by Donald Trump. The two authoritarian leaders will undoubtedly agree to allow Colombia to be used as a base of operations from which to launch operations designed to overthrow the socialist governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua, which will further add to the northward migration of those seeking political asylum in the United States. Duque helped organize the filing of criminal charges against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the International Criminal Court in The Hague by 76 Colombian senators and 50 Chilean members of the Chilean Congress. All are affiliated with right-wing political parties.

An affectation for “the end justifies the means” policies championed by Machiavelli is not the only thing that bonds Duque to Trump. Duque’s mentor, Uribe, is a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club of billionaires in Palm Beach, Florida. Uribe reportedly joined the club to gain access to Trump on behalf of his own interests, that includes narcotics money laundering, as well as those of his apprentice, Duque. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported that Uribe was linked to narcotics activities in the United States and was close to the Medellin cartel that was once led by the late Pablo Escobar.

Uribe is not the only Latin American colleague of Trump’s who is linked to narcotics smuggling and money laundering. Panama’s former president, Ricardo Martinelli, is on trial in Panama for corruption and illegal wiretapping of opponents. Martinelli was a strong backer of the Trump Ocean Club Condominium and Hotel in Panama City, which Panamanian law enforcement concluded was selling condo units to Colombians, Mexicans, Russians, and Ukrainians linked to drug smuggling activities.

Trump’s White House deputy chief of operations, Joseph Hagin, the former head of Command Consulting Group was a paid lobbyist for Martinelli and a Libyan rebel leader, Basit Igtet, who Hagin introduced to Martinelli. Igtet is the husband of Seagram’s heiress, Sara Bronfman. Bronfman is the chief funder of the sex slave cult NXIVM, based outside of Albany, New York. The cult’s leader, Keith Rainiere, is now under arrest awaiting a federal trial on charges that include sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labor. Raniere was arrested in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico before being extradited to the United States by Mexican authorities. The combination of reported disappearances of young girls separated by ICE from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border and a top Trump White House official tied to a sex slave cult is unsettling.

Duque’s presidential election victory in Colombia involved campaign support provided by Farrow Colombia, a social media manipulation partner of the same company involved in Trump’s surprise election victory, Cambridge Analytica.

The crying babies at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, ripped away from their political asylum seeking parents, will soon be joined by wails from Colombian children.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2018 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).