Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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U.S. concerned about South America’s terror fund-raising at tri-border smugglers’ haven By KEVIN GRAY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay — In this gritty border town known as a haven for drug smugglers, arms dealers and counterfeiters, stacks of money change hands in the open on every corner and thousands of people each day stream across Friendship Bridge into Ciudad del Este. They carry packages on their backs, in wheelbarrows or on carts, and border police stop few. Such chaotic scenes give life to the city’s reputation of lawlessness and U.S. officials’ description of the tri border area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet as a key South American point for Islamic terrorist fund raising to the tune of $ 100 million a year. Yet few arrests have been made or assets frozen, and local officials told The Associated Press they are ill-prepared to fully track financial movements and they discount terror links. “We need more resources and greater controls,” said Juan Carlos Duarte, a district attorney in Ciudad del Este who recendy carried out several raids on I currency exchange houses. “Frequently, it’s difficult for even the Paraguayan Central Bank to track these movements. To get to bottom of this we need more staff. We won’t be able to solve anything without more help.” Paraguay, Latin America’s second poorest country after Bolivia, is in the throes of a financial crisis that has left basics like computers for government offices hard to come by. The raids carried out this spring are aimed, in part, at snuffing out illegal transactions and helping investigators piece together a money trail used by drug runners and counterfeiters and other purported businesses operating in Ciudad del Este, Duarte said. Dozens of exchange houses, some little more than one-room offices, crowd alleyways offering to send money as far away as Asia and the Middle East. On street comers, money-changers’ fanny packs bulge with U.S. dollars, euros, Brazilian reals, Paraguayan guaranis and Argentina pesos. Store owners open cash tills brimming with bills. Coming off Friendship Bridge, which connects Ciudad del Este with sister city Foz do Iguacu in Brazil, people load and unload boxes, carts, even trash bags filled with knockoff brands of televisions, underwear, diapers, leather jackets, and watches. Street vendors and middlemen shout into cell phones and walkie-talkies. Private security officers, some clutching rifles, stand alongside armored trucks. It all is testament to this region’s reputation as South America’s contraband and smuggling capital, a place where anything from drugs to arms to pirated software reputedly can be had. That reputation brought U.S. scrutiny in the post-Sept. 11 era. Much of the focus has fallen on the 25,000-strong Muslim community in the area built up by former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner during the 1970s as a trading hub for his iron-fisted regime. Yet after more than three years under U.S. watch, American and some regional officials remain divided over the potential for terrorist links, and unregulated trade flourishes. U.S. officials suspect as much as $100 million a year flows out of the region, much of it diverted to Islamic militants linked to Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Authorities in Ciudad del Este say many among the Middle Eastern immigrant community send money home, but it is difficult to determine where the funds end up. Contributions to religious groups are even harder to trace. U.S. officials say much of the money is sent back through an assortment of difficult-to-trace means, via couriers, complex wire transfers, some hand carried. “We are concerned about material support emanating from the area and its weaknesses: the ability to move people, goods, and money in a way that goes largely untracked,” said Juan Zarate, the U.S. Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. In June, the Bush administration ordered U.S. banks to freeze any assets found belonging to a Ciudad del Este based businessman. The Treasury Department accused Assad Ahmad Barakat of using his electronics store as a cover for Hezbollah fund raising, saying he mortgaged his import-export business to borrow from a bank in a fraud scheme and “coerced” other Arab merchants into making Hezbollah contributions. However, some regional officials question assertions of terrorism links and maintain that fund raising for Hezbollah is legal here since it is recognized as a political party. Paraguayan Foreign Minister Leila Rachid recently told the Argentine newspaper, La Nacion, that the fact that Hezbollah supporters send part of their salaries to the political party in Lebanon “does not mean there are terrorist cells” in the tri-border area. Many in the Arab community have expressed outrage over increased scrutiny of the community, saying most are traders and small business owners from Syria and Lebanon. At the Mosque of the Prophet Muhammad, the main mosque in Ciudad del Este, several people gathering for Friday prayers recendy complained of unfair treatment. “They say there are terrorists here or terrorist support only because they think there must be with so many Arabs living in one place,” said Hassan Ah, an electronic salesman. “But where is the proof? Not one person has been convicted of terrorism here.” Yet, U.S. and Argentine officials point to arrests, including Barakat’s, that they say prove the area has been a base for several people with alleged links to Hezbollah and other groups. Another arrest involved Mohammed Ali Hassan Mokhlis, an Egyptian who reportedly spent time in the tri-border area, according to regional intelligence officials. A suspected planner of the 1997 Luxor massacre of 58 foreign tourists at the Temple of Hatshepsut in southern Egypt, he was extradited to Egypt from Uruguay last year after he tried to cross into Brazil using a false Malaysian passport. Four Muslim militants also were killed. Still, Brazilian and Paraguayan law enforcement see the main problems as drug and contraband trafficking. U.S. officials, who believe the terrorist risk is real, say they are helping train Paraguayan authorities to better monitor financial transfers and bolster border controls. North Carolina woman charges big bucks for debauchea Barbie dolls THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PITTSBORO, N.C. — Barbie’s being bad. The wholesome, if sometimes surreal, beauty of the iconic doll is taking on a different twist under the influence of photo lab owner Anne Baker. Baker has coerced Barbie and her friends to ditch the sequin gowns and pink roadsters for sexy outfits, outrageous poses and delinquent behavior. Plastic dolls line four long shelves in Baker’s store, called Annie B and the Black and White Guy. There’s a cross-dressing male doll with long, hot-pink hair and a tight miniskirt. A “Jailbait Barbie" stands behind bars, wearing a pink and white striped uniform and an identification number. An eight-legged black widow doll crawls up a spider web, with Ken wrapped in her webbing. “She’s a man-eater,” the sign says. In a scenario that has its parallel in real life, Baker finds down-on-their-luck Barbies, at thrift stores and from friends, then introduces them to a world of sex, drugs and violence. “I always loved Barbie,” she said. “I don’t know what led me to this. Barbie was too clean and she needed to be in the real world, so I put her in my world.” Baker has had jobs both in costume design and toy buying, and figures they inspired her to take up the Barbie habit three years ago. Now she sells the dolls for up to $125 each. Sometimes they are placed in sets. One features Ken in a clay wolf mask, his tongue flopped across his chin like a dog, his long brown hair kinked sky-high. Barbie, her lips pouted around a perfect smile and head covered by a red cape, drops her basket of fruit in surprise. Another, called “Hef and Bunny at the Mansion,” features a blue-eyed Barbie in a Playboy bunny outfit, serving drinks to Hugh Hefner (played by Ken). Baker said children enjoy the dolls sometimes more than parents do. “Kids actually don’t even realize what they are,” she said. “They just love them. It’s the parents who get upset; the kids don’t. Most everyone thinks it’s funny.” Gunfire hits Haitian slum as deadly political clashes, civil unrest escalate tensions By STEVENSON JACOBS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Gunfire erupted in a slum teeming with loyalist! of ousted President Jean-Bertranc Aristide on Sunday, sending people scattering through trash-strewn street! following days of political clashes thai have left at least 14 dead. Residents said men fired into the air stole food from market vendors and burned tires in the streets in the slum ol La Saline. The unrest came a day after police arrested Haiti’s Senate president and two other pro-Aristide politician! following a six-hour standoff in a radio station. Justice Minister Bernard Gousse told reporters the three were suspected of being “intellectual authors” of the violence that erupted Thursday during demonstrations demaneiing Aristide’! return. The politicians, who insisted they were innocent, were led out in handcuffs from the offices of Radio Caraibes Saturday night after a judge entered to negotiate their surrender. Gousse said police found in one ol their cars an Uzi submachine gun and a T65 assault rifle, which are illegal in Haiti. “They’re people who are barbaric and violent,” he told reporters. Pro-Aristide groups criticized the arrests, saying police didn’t have a warrant and had planted the weapons. Heavy gunfire rang out Saturday night and Sunday in parts of Port-au Prince. No one was reported killed, but streets remained blocked with overturned wooden market stalls in some areas. Tensions have erupted as the impoverished country struggles to recover from floods unleashed two weeks ago by Tropical Storm Jeanne, which killed more than 1,550 and left some 900 missing, most presumed dead. In the hard-hit northwestern city of Gonaives on Sunday, residents brought in two emaciated men found semiconscious on the ground to a clinic run by Argentine troops. Doctors said it appeared the two hadn’t eaten in several days and had psychological trauma, one because he lost relatives in the floods. The other, 40-year-old Jacques Agelus Faustin, was found collapsed under a mango tree. “We all thought he was dead,” said Soupon Jean-Paul, the friend who found him. “I wasn’t even looking for him at the time.” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson also visited Gonaives on Sunday, meeting officials and stopping at the clinic, where U.N. peacekeepers have treated hundreds of the wounded. “There’s no question we have to figure out how to rebuild Gonaives,” THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A Haitian girl eats rice and beans among debris left in her house by Tropical Storm Jeanne in Gonaives, Haiti, on Sunday. Thompson said, adding that would involve creating jobs through public works projects. f Last week, President Bush asked Congress for $50 million for storm-hit Caribbean countries, with about half planned for Haiti. “Help is on the way,” Thompson said before getting on a helicopter to return to Port-au-Prince. ■ HOMECOMING Continued from page 1 front of the Russell House on Greene Street. “One of our targets was to incorporate more non-Greek organizations. I’m non-Greek, and (Homecoming)’s not just for Greeks. “(Homecoming)’s for all students, even if they attend only one event on any day,” she said. Third-year mechanical engineering student Todd Davis doesn’t* plan to attend any of the week’s events. “I might go to the football game, bu that’s about it,” Davis said. “That’s th finale.” The Gamecocks will take on Ol Miss Saturday at 1 p.m. at Williams Brice Stadium. For information on mor Homecoming Week events, contact Ka Wright at 777-7130 or go t< www.cp.sc.edu/homecoming.htm. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocknews@gum.sc.edu Need Help? If work, family or other challenges have stalled your research, here's how we can help: • Clarifying the method section ■ • Assisting with survey design • Selecting appropriate statistics • Enteringkand analyzing data • Creating APA tables and figures • Reporting the result • Explaining the ; statistical output i Why risk , delaying your graduation pla, • statisti KHMtfonfll_ ■ THEFT Continued from page 1 problems. “They tend to work themselves out,” he said. Scheffres said that Dining Services doesn’t keep records on how much money it loses to food theft but that he’s analyzing sales information and expects to have exact figures this week. To calculate losses, Dining Services officials would have to compare product movement numbers from cash registers to how much food the cafeteria vendors actually produce. The results would include a margin of error for mistakes clerks make while ringing students up. When the analysis is ready, he said, I - Scheffres expects it will show the most losses in Gamecock Park, the cafeteria on the second floor of the Russell House. There, he said, opportunistic shoplifters sneak away with three or four food items a night. Scheffres places part of the blame on cashiers for letting thieves slip by. “I don’t think that our cashiers are aggressive at all, and it’s not important to them,” he said. “They don’t want the confrontation.” Scheffres said more training would better prepare cashiers to take on shoplifters. But Brandy McClinton, a clerk in Gamecock Park for about five months, said Dining Services asks too much of its cashiers. “We can’t keep our eyes on everybody that comes through,” she said. Felicia Kennedy, who has worked the ■egister next to McClinton for about two months, said it’s not worth it to confront iome shoplifters. “I don’t like chasing people down," iaid Kennedy, who said she earns $6.05 ut hour. “I’m not going to chase nobody fown for a soda.” Lou said he catches would-be thieves >n a daily basis. From his place by the refrigerator, he watches as they tuck a box jf sushi into a folded newspaper or use an Did receipt to stroll past busy cashiers mthout paying. Then he’ll ran after them. “I’ve seen it all," he said fretfully. “I natch someone every day.” Comments on this story? E-mail ramecocknews@gwm.sc.edu ■ HOSPICE Continued from page 1 to treat someone who is dying with respect and kindness by serving as companions to their patients instead of acting as professionals. “The student’s responsibility is just to be a friend to their patient,” Messer said. “They are not there to diagnose them or to help them medically.” For Campbell, whose patient suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, building a friendship was not an easy feat because her patient’s illness prevented her from carrying on conversations. “It was very hard learning how to comfort her while sitting in silence because we couldn’t fill the time with idle conversation like you would usually do,” Campbell said. Developing a relationship also proved difficult because of her patient’s memory loss. “Every visit was like meeting her for the first time because she didn’t remember me,” Campbell said. “I had to reintroduce myself every time.” Despite the setbacks, though, Campbell said she believes her patient enjoyed the time they spent just sitting and walking together. “Even though she did not say much, I still had a sense that she appreciated me being there,” Campbell said. According to Thornhill, the program also helps students develop their communication skills with both their patients and their family members. “The program gives them communication experience for their future jobs, and this communication is an art that requires skill and development,” Thornhill said. Graham Parks, a third-year medical student, said interacting with hospice patients helped him with his communication. “Before doing hospice work, I didn’t know what to say or what not to say,” Parks said. “I always wondered if there were certain questions not to ask and certain topics that shouldn’t be brought up, but you don’t have to do anything except just be a presence and listen to them.” Like Campbell, Parks had difficulty establishing a relationship with his patient because she would not open up to him initially. Parks’ patient, who did not suffer from a particular disease but was at the age where parts of her body were no longer functioning properly, eventually warmed up to her visitor. “As I got to know her better, she would talk about her past, her loved ones and her experiences," Parks said. “She had lots of interesting life stories, and it was a real privilege to meet and spend time with her.” Parks said he considered the program simply to be an assignment at first, but once he bonded with his patient, he looked forward to their weekly visits. Although Parks’ experience mirrors the preconceived idea portrayed in books and movies where dying patients reminisce and tell their life histories to strangers, Thornhill said that this experience is not always the case, even though students often expect it to be. Getz, whose patient was a middle aged man suffering from cancer, did not hear his patient’s life story. “Ironically, he was a huge Clemson fan so we talked football a lot and talked about what was wrong with the football programs,” Getz said. As a part of the program, students are also required to keep journals in which they discuss and comment on their visits. “I wanted the students to keep journals because you learn more through self-reflection, and the experience becomes more real when it is put into words,” Thornhill said. Parks said he found the journals helpful. “At first is was just an extra assignment, but it made me think deeply and forced me to confront and process my feelings,” Parks said. Graham said the journals helped her remember the special moments from her visits. “Since my patient didn’t talk, lots of visits were the same,” Graham said. “The journal helped me remember if anything distinguishing happened, because if it did, 1 would definitely write it in my journal.” Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocknetvs@gwm.se.edu Graduate & Professional School Fair Thursday, October 7, 2004 11 am to 3 pm Outside on Greene St. Calling all undergraduate and graduate students!! Learn about programs, schools, LSAT's, MCAT's, and the GRE! Don't miss this opportunity to start planning your future! LOTS OF GIVEAWAYS! Call 777.2477 for more information Sponsored by the Graduate Student Association