Lebanese Gets 12 Years in Jail for FARC Conspiracy
A U.S. federal court sentenced a Lebanese man to 12 years in prison Thursday for conspiring to provide Colombia's leftist FARC rebels with military-grade weapons in exchange for over a ton of cocaine.
Jamal Youssef, 54, pleaded guilty in May to one count of providing material support to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America's oldest insurgent group.
"Jamal Youssef was ready, willing and able to provide an arsenal of weapons and explosives to people he believed to be part of a terrorist organization, dedicated, in part, to killing Americans," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
From July 2008 to July 2009, Youssef conspired with others to provide AR-15 and M-16 assault rifles, M-60 machine guns, C-4 explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and other military equipment to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents posing as FARC representatives, court documents showed.
Youssef claimed the items had been stolen from U.S. forces in Iraq.
He was arrested in Honduras in August 2009 and later extradited to the Southern District of New York for trial.
Source: Agence France Presse
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