Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

COMMITTEE FOR SOLIDARITY . . . (CSAMPP) • 117ons, and other military hardware for FARC. One of the three FARCcommanders named in the indictment was Tomás Molina Caracas,who headed the FARC 16th Front in eastern Colombia. In September2002 Carlos Castaño, the leader of the Self-Defense Forces ofColombia, along with four other members of the group, was alsoindicted on drug-related charges. On 13 November 2002 the secondhighestFARC leader, Jorge Briceño Suárez, along with eight otherFARC members, was charged with drug trafficking. As late as 2004,about 40 percent of Colombia’s best agricultural land was held bydrug traffickers, including both left-wing and right-wing paramilitarygroups. Following a three-year operation, U.S. DEA and Colombianantinarcotics police arrested Pablo Rayo Montana, head of his owndrug-smuggling operation, along with $70 million in properties,ships, and warehouses. As of 2006 there remained about 41 other privatecocaine traffickers sought for extradition by the United States.COMMITTEE FOR SOLIDARITY WITH ARAB AND MIDDLEEASTERN POLITICAL PRISONERS (CSAMPP). The Comitéde soutien avec les prisonniers politiques et arabes et du Moyen-Orient was the cover name for a pro-Iranian Lebanese cellular groupthat engaged in an anti-French bombing campaign for the limitedend of pressuring the French government to release Georges IbrahimAbdallah, the leader of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factionsarrested in France in 1984 for his group’s attacks on U.S. andIsraeli diplomats. During 8–15 September 1986 the CSAMPP carriedout four bombings in Paris; each bombing incident was followedby the release of a communiqué in Beirut claiming responsibility bythe CSAMPP. On 25 October 1986 the CSAMPP bombed an Italiandiplomat’s car in Beirut, causing the diplomat minor injuries. In totalthe CSAMPP was responsible for 14 incidents claiming six lives andinjuring 171 people. This bombing campaign proved an embarrassmentto French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, whose inaugurationceremony was overshadowed by a CSAMPP bombing that killed twopeople and injured 28 others. Eventually Chirac gave in, notifyingthe CSAMPP through Hilarion Capucci, the Greek Catholic prelatewith ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Syriangovernment, that the French government would find a way to releaseAbdallah when his case came to trial or at least to impose a relativelylight sentence. When this later came to light, in late November 1987, it