Rockets for Terrorists

When the Colombian government last year unveiled extensive evidence that the government of Venezuela had collaborated with a Colombian rebel movement known for terrorism and drug trafficking, other Latin American governments and the United States mostly chose to look the other way. The evidence was contained on laptops captured in a controversial raid by the Colombian army on a guerrilla base in Ecuador. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez denounced the e-mails and documents as forgeries, and the potential consequences of concluding that Venezuela was supporting a terrorist organization against a democratic government -- which could include mandatory U.S. sanctions and referral to the U.N. Security Council -- were more than the Bush administration was prepared to contemplate.

Now Colombia has made public evidence that will be even more difficult to ignore. In a raid on a camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), a group officially designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, Colombian forces captured sophisticated, Swedish-produced antitank rockets. A Swedish investigation confirmed that they were originally sold to the Venezuelan army by the arms manufacturer Saab. What's more, FARC e-mails from the laptops captured in Ecuador appear to refer to the weapons; in one, a FARC operative in Caracas reports discussing delivery of the arms in a 2007 meeting with two top Venezuelan generals, including the director of military intelligence, Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios.
 
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