Reply #17: Israel's ops in Central America are well known [View All]

[TomClash]

Below is just the tip of the iceberg.

http://dailysketcher.blogspot.com/

30 September 2009
Honduras, the Israeli Connection
According to Ynet News in Israel, quoting the Israeli consul in Guatemala (who is also responsible for Honduras), there are 25 Israelis resident in Honduras, most of whom live in the capital Tegucigalpa.

According to Ynet and the consul "they are primarily employed by or operate security firms or work in agricultural development". Not suprisingly they weren't worried by the coup.

One of the security firms in Honduras is Interseg S.A., sister company to telecommunications firm Alfacom S.A., run by Yehuda Leitner, recently accused by Patricia Rodes as being behind the supply of toxic gases used against President Zelaya in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. Not only that methinks, but also the LRAD acoustic weapons (see my comments) and possibly the cell phone jammer encountered in a house next to the Brazilian Embassy.

Interestingly, Interseg is one of several security companies recommended by the US Embassy in Honduras and through its connections to Alfacom is a registered supplier to the Government of Honduras.

According to Ed Herman and Gerry O'Sullivan:

"Like its U.S. and British security firm counterparts, Israel's International Security and Defense Systems (ISDS) is a wide-ranging, operation with full "counterterrorism" capabilities. ISDS, based in Tel Aviv, is co-owned by Leo Gleser, a former colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who participated in the 1976 raid on Entebbe. ISDS has been very active in Central America, protecting business and government leaders as well as providing "counterterrorism" training to military, an~, paramilltary per~nnel in Honduras and Guatemala.

In an April 30, 1985 letter of presentation to the Guatemalan military, Sammy Sapyr, then director of ISDS's Guatemalan branch, described the company's services in great detail. These included antiterrorism training and the formation of antiterrorism "squads," electronic surveillance, intelligence gathering, and the sale of arms, including helicopters and airplanes. Jon Lee Anderson points out that the document also offers a course in "selective terror" under the general rubric "the training of military personnel."(62) It should be noted, however, that in light of the role and performance of the Guatemalan army, all of ISDS's services under the name of "coun¬terterrorism" facilitate serious state terrorism.

According to Gerard Latchinian, a multimillionaire currentl serving a thirty-year prison term in Indiana for his role in the 1984 attempted overthrow of Honduras's civilian government, ISDS em¬ployees were active in training the Honduran death squads, as well as members of the Nicaraguan contras, in techniques of terror. In fact, ISDS's Gleser hired two ex-IDF members, Yehuda Leitner and Emile Sa'ada, to help train members of Gustavo Alvarez Martinez's notorious Battalion 3-16, the general's private death squad. Jose Valle Lapez, a former member of the battalion, has admitted to participating in a rash of kidnappings, torture sessions, and brutal murders, some of which took place in the presence of "Mr. Mike" from the V.S. embassy, who oversaw several torture operations.(63)

When Alvarez Martinez was eventually ousted from Honduras, his successor, General Walter Lapez Reyes, immediately severed all ties with ISDS. L6pez Reyes told John Lee Anderson that ISDS trained Alvarez Martinez's "special secunty groups" in hostage-taking and hijacking techniques, and that this was, in part, a front for training the contras, who also took the course. "There was coordi¬nation between them and the CIA," L6pez Reyes told Anderson. "So, I didn't renew their contract. . . . The Israelis had something to do with Alvarez's death squads. One way or another."(64) Despite the severed contract, however, it appears that the "official" death squad organized by Alvarez Martinez lives on.(65)
In 1986, Yehuda Leitner, who had worked with Gleser and ISDS, fled Honduras after his connections with the contras were exposed by Anne- Marie O'Connor in a Reuters dispatch. His colleague in the affair, Emile Sa'ada, also admits to having contracted with the Honduran government "to teach the Hondurans counterterrorism," but now claims to be nothing more than a melon farmer. The company for which he works, Shemesh, currently employs some five thousand Honduran peasants as pickers and growers. But Shemesh also nominally owns ISDS, although as one U .S. military advisor told Anderson, "Israelis always go through front companies," and in Central America, "Shemesh has always been their front." And according to Carl Fehlandt, a former arms salesman in ISDS in Guatemala between 1982 and 1986, Shemesh/ISDS "is the official Israeli arms outlet. The Israeli government owns ISDS and the man who calls the shots is the Minister of Defense."(66) "