Active

Terror organization: Hezbollah;

Status: Hezbollah’s operational chief in Latin America. Senior commander and key figure in Unit 910. He is one of the key figures, if not the key figure of Hezbollah in the Latin American region.

Role: Hussein Ahmad Karaki, is Hezbollah’s operational chief in Latin America.

He was already the Hezbollah’s regional commander during the two terror attacks in Argentina at the 90’s (115 people died and hundreds were injured).

He had been sent to the region in mid-1991 and the spies claimed that since 1992 he had been in charge of the company “El Fortín”, in Maicao, Colombia. It was identified as the company that acquired the explosive materials that El Reda would bring from Brazil,” he described.

Karaki also played an important role in the attack on the Israeli Embassy, 1992. Karaki oversaw buying the Ford F-100 truck at a car dealership located at Juan B. Justo 7537. To acquire the vehicle, he used a photocopy of a Brazilian document number 34031567, in the name of Da Luz Elias Ribeiro.

Karaki entered Argentina at the beginning of July 1994, from Foz de Iguazu, to perpetrate the attack on AMIA. He arrived at “Aeroparque Jorge Newbery” (airport close to Buenos Aires) with a Colombian passport with the pseudonym of Alberto León Nain. He directed live from a “safe house” in Foz du Iguazu, Brazil (Triple Frontier). He was accompanied by his deputy Khaled Mohammed Kassem.

Regarding the Colombian passport, they indicated that on that occasion he presented himself as Alberto León Nain and that he also had involvement in several attacks or terrorist plans in other countries in the region, including Colombia.

Karaki had a critical role in a plan to assassinate two Israeli businessmen in Bogotá that fortunately, the Colombian authorities identified the situation and prevented the attack.

Karaki received help Colombia from an Iranian Quds Force operator named Rahmat Asadi, who was responsible for recruiting two Colombian hitmen who were going to end the lives of the businessmen.

In addition to this, months later Karaki’s presence in Colombia was also identified to carry out an attack against an Israeli diplomat, who was the target of Hezbollah and a Lebanese who was following orders from Iran.

According to the Argentine minister, after Colombia, Hussein Ahmad Karaki was in Bolivia to organize an attack similar to the one in Buenos Aires; however, the authorities identified the presence of a car bomb a few meters from a building, which prevented it from exploding

Karaki is not currently on the continent, but most likely based in Lebanon. However, reports have revealed that he was known in the region as Elías Ribeiro Da Luz, an identity with which he evaded authorities and was able to move between countries without problems.

He speaks besides Arabic also Spanish and Portuguese.

Hussein Ahmad Karaki, better known by his operational nicknames “Saad Ezzeddine, Rami” and “Abu-Ali”, was one of the key logistics members who carried out the attack against the AMIA. Born in 1966.

Hussein Ahmad Karaki is married and has two children, as confirmed by the Lebanese electoral census. One of them has been living and working in Italy for some years. Karaki and part of his family network are also account holders at Hezbollah’s bank in Lebanon, Al Qard al Hassan, according to data leaked in December 2020.

Karaki oversees a worldwide drug trafficking network based in Venezuela with the complicity of the Maduro regime, accused by the United States Department of Justice of narcoterrorism and drug trafficking in 2020.

Location: Lebanon, Latin America.;

Known also as: Husein Ahmad Karaki; Hassan Karaki;