-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4242559,00.html
}}>Begin
Drugs trafficking arrest leads police to Israeli underworld
Investigation into lucrative global ecstasy trade claims a dramatic
breakthrough
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Tuesday August 21, 2001
The Guardian
Oded Tuito was alleged to be a global pill-pusher, whose Israeli mafia group
was the biggest operator in a booming international trade in the lucrative "hug
drug".
Now Mr Tuito, who allegedly stamped his ecstasy pills with the Star of David
and the Tweety Bird cartoon character that reminded him of his own name, is
sitting in a Spanish prison.
Picked up in the eastern coastal town of Castelldefels, just outside
Barcelona, his arrest has provoked a deluge of extradition requests and
police inquiries from four continents.
Mr Tuito, 40, had half a dozen homes and as many aliases. In Spain he
called himself Adel Tonitou and lived in a luxury Barcelona hotel. He kept his
wife and family in France but travelled the world, allegedly directing his
operations while on the move.
"The fact that he could be based in Spain, away from his main production and
distribution bases, allowed him greater security," a Spanish police spokesman asserted
yesterday.
Mr Tuito was arrested in May, but allegedly continued directing shipments from his
cell in Madrid's Soto del Real prison until a global police operation against the rest
of his gang began two weeks ago.
Three dozen of his alleged associates, part of an organisation that shipped several
million pills a year, have been arrested since then in Spain and as far away as Los
Angeles and Melbourne, Australia. The men police beli
eve were his principal lieutenants, Michael Elkaiam and Simon Itach, were picked up in
Barcelona.
The gang was also alleged to have trafficked in cannabis and cocaine and been linked
to a group of Israeli armed robbers who targeted jewellers' shops in Barcelona,
according to Spanish police.
"The profits were ploughed into Israeli real estate, being sent there from the US or
Barcelona," a police spokesman said. Police forces in various parts of the world said
Mr Tuito's arrest confirmed the alleged growing gl
obal influence of Israel's loose-knit, but expanding, crime organisations.
America's drug enforcement agency had been about to put his name on its public list of
the world's eight most wanted drug trafficking suspects.
"Historically, Tuito is the most notorious ecstasy trafficker known to law enforcement
authorities in Europe, Israel and the US, and was the most prolific ecstasy smuggler
based in Europe," a DEA spokesman claimed.
Mr Tuito has been charged in New York, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh and is connected to
investigations in Florida, Kentucky and Delaware. He is also wanted by the Israeli
courts. Spanish police, meanwhile, are investigati
ng allegations that he also trafficked in ecstasy to the island of Ibiza.
The Israeli allegedly made a fortune out of exploiting the mark-up on a pill that
costs only 30p to make. "He was buying pills for 50 cents a piece in Holland and
selling here for $28 [�19]. That is quite a mark-up," a DE
A agent in New York said.
Mr Tuito allegedly bought up the entire production of pills from several clandestine
laboratories in the Netherlands, which were driven overland to Spain, Belgium, France
and Germany. A variety of courier services is alle
ged to have been used to sneak the drugs out of the EU. Strippers from New York and
Spanish teenagers or pensioners took the drugs to the US, Canada, Israel and
Australia. Sometimes pills were packed into picture frames a
nd sent via ordinary international messenger services.
"There was a constant flow of ecstasy," claimed Jose Martinez, a special agent with
the DEA. "He was sending young, attractive women on European vacations. They'd go to
Paris for a few days, hang out, he'd give them money
for expenses, and on the way back they would have to bring a package." An estimated
100,000 tablets reached Los Angeles alone each month, Mr Martinez said.
A series of police raids in the past two months have netted 340,000 pills in Spain,
Israel, the Netherlands, the US and Australia, Spanish police said. Mr Tuito's gang is
alleged to have also exported to Latin America via
Panama and Asia via Thailand.
The emergence of alleged Israeli mafias as major drug traffickers comes after they
spotted the potential of what some Interpol officials now consider the world's most
popular illicit drug, with an estimated annual global
consumption of more than 500m ecstasy pills.
"The Israelis moved into an empty niche. They were among the first to identify the
enormous profit potential in ecstasy," a senior Israeli police official, Yifat
Steinberger, told the Jerusalem Report magazine this week.
He alleged that loose-knit and flexible global crime groups headed by Israelis had
grown on the back of contacts made in Israel's own crime underworld and during
military service in the army.
A shipment of 2.1m pills that arrived in Los Angeles from Paris earlier this year, and
the corpse of an Israeli dealer found in a car boot at Los Angeles airport, were both
put down to the Israeli mafias.
Even New York's strict Hassidic community has been affected by the
ecstasy trade. A 31-year-old alleged protege of Mr Tuito, Israeli citizen Sean
Erez, reportedly hired a small group of ultra-Orthodox teenagers and 20-year-
olds to work as international couriers.
These traditionally dressed "Hassidim" were recruited on the basis that their
clothes and religious aura would make them immune to customs searches.
"He changed the courier profile 180 degrees," claimed one DEA agent who
worked on Erez's case.
Police in the US believe that the new Israeli groups were beginning to forge
contacts with major Italian crime families, such as the Gambino and Giotti
groups.
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
End<{{
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
