Rep Warns of Link Between Hezbollah, Mexican Cartels

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrollah. (AP)

The presidential campaign has featured plenty of talk about terrorism in the Middle East, but one lawmaker is warning that the federal government is ignoring a growing Hezbollah presence in Mexico, with the Lebanese terror group increasingly joining forces with drug cartels.

One report shows hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners living in Mexico, and a small percentage of them may be radicals using routes established by drug networks to sneak into the U.S.

The ties linking Mexico to Islamic terrorism were underscored earlier this year when an alleged Iranian operative plotted to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington using a hired gun on loan from a Mexican drug cartel. Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) says the mounting evidence of a Hezbollah presence in Mexico is being ignored by the Department of Homeland Security.

"I don't have a lot of faith in the Department of Homeland Security," said Myrick. "They should be looking at these groups in Mexico much more closely."

"I don't have a lot of faith in the Department of Homeland Security. They should be looking at these groups in Mexico much more closely."

- Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.)

The incidents fueling Myrick's frustration include the Oct. 17 guilty plea in Manhattan Federal Court of a suspect plotting to pay $1.5 million to a suspected hitman for the Los Zetas Cartel, who was actually a DEA informant, to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. by bombing a busy Washington, D.C., restaurant the ambassador frequents.

Mansour Arbabsiar, 58, a naturalized U.S. citizen holding both Iranian and U.S. passports, was arrested on Sept. 29, 2011, at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. He faces a maximum potential sentence of 25 years in prison.

"A little more than a year after his arrest, Mansour Arbabsiar has admitted to his role in a deadly plot approved by members of the Iranian military to assassinate a sitting foreign ambassador on U.S. soil,

View the Original article