Washington will designate the Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist group starting Monday

Washington.- The United States Department of State will designate, starting this Monday, the Cartel de los Soles, an organization about which very little is known and which Washington links to the leadership of the Venezuelan Army and Government, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), at a time marked by the increase in the White House’s pressure strategy on the Nicolás Maduro administration. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on November 16 that, according to the Donald Trump administration, “there is sufficient factual basis” demonstrating that the Cartel de los Soles meets the conditions described in the immigration and nationality law that regulates the designation of FTOs. That rule establishes that a FTO must be a foreign group that participates “in terrorist activities or terrorism” and that must “threaten the safety of U.S. citizens or the national security of the United States”, which includes the areas of defense, foreign relations, or economic interests.

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This decision comes after the U.S. Treasury Department already designated the Cartel de los Soles as a specially designated global terrorist group (SDGT) in July, although the Venezuelan government asserted at the time that this organization is a “fabrication” of the United States. Rubio considers that the Cartel de los Soles, and other designated FTOs, such as the Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel, are responsible for terrorist violence in the American hemisphere, as well as for trafficking drugs to the United States and Europe.

Although US authorities claim that the Cartel de los Soles (a name that supposedly comes from the insignias worn by the generals) is a group mainly composed of Venezuelan military personnel since the nineties of the 20th century, the investigations of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were not officialized until March 2020, during Trump’s first term.

It was then that the Department of Justice formally acknowledged the existence of this group, which Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, are said to lead. The designation of the cartel as FTO coincides with the intensification of Trump’s pressure strategy on Maduro through an increasing military deployment in the southern Caribbean Sea, with which the White House says it seeks to combat drug trafficking, which has led to the summary destruction of around twenty -of what Washington assures are- narco-boats and the death of 83 of their occupants.