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testimony came at the trial of Carlos Eduardo Restrepo, who is accused of laundering more than $10 million for the Medellin cartel through a currency-exchange company in Greenwich that was an undercover ''sting'' operation set up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Money laundering, under a 1986 Federal law, is the concealment and illegal transfer of money obtained through unlawful acts.The United States Attorney in Connecticut, Stanley A. Twardy Jr., said in an interview that Mr. Restrepo is the first person to be tried under the Federal law. Mr. Restrepo, who is 38 and who has described himself as a businessman, has pleaded not guilty.

Sub- sequently, as the state attempted to bring these gangs under control, these same young boys began assassi- nating policemen and judges.

control, these same young boys began assassi- nating policemen and judges. In 1983, a 16-year-old adolescent discharged a sub-

President Belisario Betancur immediately enacted a treaty of extradition with the United States -- where traffickers were more likely to be prosecuted -- and an armed bat- tle began in which the young sicarios occupied the front lines for the drug cartels.

The Chechens (or the Vainakhs) are an ancient civilized nation. They are descendants of the Hurrians, the founders of the ancient Kingdoms of Mittani and Urartu15 and are, therefore, one of the civilizations of the ancient Near East. Since antiquity they were in contact with, and influ- enced, the peoples of the steppes.16 The Soviet narrative is, thus, reversed: the Chechens are the Russians’ elders in age and civilization and, by impli- cation, are also the ones who indirectly civilized them. (2) The Vainakhs have inhabited their present territory continuously since at least the 4th century BC.17 The northern districts, now populated by Rus- sians, had also been settled by the Chechens until Russian colonization dislodged them. This argument aims to counter the Soviet thesis that the Chechens migrated from the mountains into the lowlands only in the 17th and 18th centuries,18 and the possible political implications of this. (3) They have formed states and polities over the ages. A Vainakh state – Durzuketi – existed in the Northern Caucasus in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC and one of its princesses was the first queen of Georgia.19 Other states of which they were part included Serir (5th-9th centuries AD), Alaniya (10th-11th centuries) and Simsim (16t

Although Russian ‘robbery raids’ against peaceful Cheche

beginning with Moscow’s attempt to depose the newly elected president Jokhar Dudaev by paratroopers in November 1991, and escalating into a full-scale invasion in December 199

Local and state politicians have increasingly become targets of violence by the drug cartels, which have also attacked rival gangs. Some murders are particularly vicious, intended to gain media attention and frighten both rival drug gangs and law enforcement officers. "Prosecutors, police chiefs, and thousands of others have been killed," and entire families sometimes come under attack.

Mexico's drug cartels started recruiting more teenagers and young people to replace those killed or arrested.40 These young people serve as "expendable foot soldiers" for the cartels in battles over drug trafficking routes to the United States and local drug using markets in Mexico.

Oil revenue accounts for more than one -third of die Mexican government's annual income.1 In 2009, after oil revenues declined during the recession, Mexican lawmakers looked for alternative revenue sources.2 As part of the 2010 budget, Mexican legislators increased several taxes in 2009:

In the past two years, at least eighty U.S. border officers have been convicted of corruption and it is estimated that there are almost as many investigations each year involving border officers who have accepted bribes so diat illegal drugs could be trafficked into the United States.

The Pastrana government already confronts a three-decade-old insurgency being waged by two left-wing guerrilla armies

Plan Colombia is ineffectual in achieving its stated objectives, and it produces a number of highly undesirable side effects. The brutal reality is that, as long as drugs are illegal, there will be a huge black-market premium-a lucrative potential profit that will attract producers. Plan Colombia cannot repeal the economic laws of supply and demand. In attempting to do so, the United States is creating even more trouble for an already troubled neighbor.

Plan Colombia

instituted a one-time war tax

U.S. technical assistance to the Colombian air force that allowed it to engage in effective anti-guerrilla bombing campaigns. The guerrillas had also suffered setbacks due to their own political and strategic errors,

Plan Patriota, which called for the Colombian armed forces to surround and annihilate the guerrillas in their interior strongholds. But these were locations the guerrillas knew well and where they enjoyed solid popular support, allowing them to soundly defeat the military

efficacy.

In 1990, after the assassination of Liberal presidential candidate Luís Carlos Galán, the government launched a frontal attack on the Medellín cartel. The security forces began by attacking the youth gangs considered to be the reserve army of the narcotraffickers. This offensive took place without the least respect for human rights. It used the same logic as the counterinsurgency war: classifying entire communities as enemies of society. To be an adolescent in a poor neighborhood meant to be classified as a sicario.