The US State Department announced that it will designate as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) the Cartel de los Soles, a group Washington links to Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro, amid increased military deployment in the Caribbean.
This designation, effective November 24, comes after the U.S. Treasury Department listed the Cartel de los Soles as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group (SDGT) in July, although the Venezuelan government asserted in August that this organization is an “invention” of the United States.
“Based in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles is led by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals in the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature and judiciary,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
The announcement comes hours after the arrival in the Caribbean on Sunday of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the largest in the U.S. fleet, as part of the military deployment Trump has ordered in the region.
In addition, the United States announced on Sunday the destruction of another vessel allegedly carrying drugs in the Pacific Ocean, where it killed three men on board whom it accused of being “narco-terrorists”, bringing to 21 similar bombings and more than 80 deaths since September.
Without mentioning these attacks, Rubio warned in his statement that “the United States will continue to use all available tools to protect its national security interests and deny funding and resources to narcoterrorists.”
The Secretary of State also stated that “neither Maduro nor his cronies represent the legitimate government of Venezuela”.
“The Cartel de los Soles, and other designated FTOs, including the Aragua Train and the Sinaloa Cartel are responsible for terrorist violence throughout the hemisphere, as well as drug trafficking to the United States and Europe,” said the leader of U.S. diplomacy.
The State Department’s Office of Latin America had advanced this designation on July 25, when it explained then that this would allow the U.S. to use “all resources at its disposal to prevent President Nicolas Maduro from continuing to benefit from the destruction of American lives.”
Following this announcement, Venezuela’s Minister of Interior and Justice, Diosdado Cabello, said in August that the “Cartel of the Suns is an invention”, that the Americans “invented it and in that time it has had about 300 bosses, every time someone bothers them they put him as the head of the Cartel de los Soles”.
With information from EFE
