[El Universal] Little or nothing is known about Walid Makled the day when the Mexican police found a plane from Venezuela which carried no passengers but 128 suitcases stuffed with cocaine. He was a stranger. Now, in the United States he faces charges for that same flight where Venezuelan courts found no people responsible.
On December 10, 2006, a DC-9 aircraft landed in Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. The initial destination was the city of Toluca. However,
The infamous However ...
it reported on its way an emergency that raised the alarm of Mexican authorities.
Luis Correa, then president of the Venezuelan Counternarcotics Office, said two weeks after the discovery that the airliner had left Maiquetía international airport without the 128 suitcases.
It is hard to know the specific time when the 128 black suitcases were loaded. There are conflicting versions in this story. Unlike the Mexican case, there are not people responsible in Venezuela. The First Trial Court in central Vargas state acquitted the three defendants last November 16. The staff on duty on the night when the plane took off was granted complete freedom.
A night of disagreements
The Public Prosecutor Office was never able to prove that the 128 suitcases were placed inside the plane when it was parked on ramp 7 of the Maiquetía auxiliary terminal. What is clear though is that on that night the airport protocols were ignored.
But public prosecutors and defense attorneys did agree that there was a string of irregularities from the very beginning. For instance, the names of the two crew members registered at the Maiquetía airport did not match with the name of Miguel Vasquez. The Venezuelan pilot was captured by the Mexican police on the night of the discovery.
The same aircraft had taken off earlier, before its final attempt. Some glitches made it come back to the same place. Such a situation aroused the suspicions of the Public Prosecutor Office.
The kingpin
It was clear from the lawsuit that more than three people were needed for such an operation. Defense lawyers claimed that if the load entered Maiquetía, vans or any other vehicles to carry the discreet suitcases of 43 kilos each were needed.
Anyhow, Makled had not popped up in that case. Its name was not spelled during the trial. Some witnesses to the lawsuit were most surprised when US public prosecutor Preet Bharara indicted him at the Court of the South District of New York in a document released last November 4. According to the paper, Makled is accused of having managed this and another air shipment bound to Utila Island, in Honduras.
"Makled is a king among gangsters. He presumably coordinated a large international organization of drug traffic and these charges emphasize our commitment to chase whoever floods the United States with poison to their own economic benefit," Bharara said on November 4.
A reply has come little by little from Colombia, where Makled is imprisoned and waiting for extradition. "Tomorrow, I will be not alone, standing there, in front of a jury. If I am extradited to the United States, am I going to be the only person appearing before the bench? No way," he recently told daily newspaper La Verdad in his latest interview.
"Remember, the US government is accusing me of taking a DC-9 aircraft with five tons and a half to Mexico, to the city of Campeche, from Maiquetía international airport, and that it left from ramp four, which is the presidential ramp. If that is true, I could not make it alone," he added.
Snowball
Known even in the charges made against him in New York as "the Turk" and "the Arab," Makled was born to a Syrian immigrant who got ahead in Valencia, the capital city of central Carabobo state, thanks to a store of household appliances. His family's low profile vanished in the past few years. In 2008, it was difficult not to know about his brother Aldala. He gave away washing machines and household appliances ahead of an election campaign for Valencia mayoralty. The move was not warmly welcome inside the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, not even by President Hugo Chavez.
In a nationwide strike from December 2002 to January 2003, Makled granted the national government a fleet of 74 trucks to carry the gasoline in short supply by then. Now, he grumbles about his comrades helped by him on that occasion. "We believed in the process, but this is a treacherous government."
Sure enough, it is a quite different scenario. In Venezuela, he used to be linked to some government circles; now, the government waits for him to appear in court and be accountable for almost four tons of cocaine which appeared on November 14, 2008 in a rented farm in Tocuyito, Carabobo state, and also for the murder of journalist Orel Sambrano and veterinarian Francisco Larrazabal.
Extradition to Venezuela is ongoing. In the meantime, Makled has threatened with a snowball.
"What I have is enough to take over Venezuela," Makled told RCN in his first interview behind bars in Colombia. "There is corruption in Venezuela, drug traffic. I can just show the US government what I have in my hands and they can immediately take over Venezuela." |
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