August 29, 2007 (LPAC)--Russian authorities arrested retired Israeli Lt. Col. Yair Klein in Moscow on August 27, as he prepared to board a plane back to Tel Aviv, using a false passport. The arms trafficker, notorious for his role in arming conflicts from the Americas to Sierra Leone, has been wanted by Colombian authorities since he was convicted in absentia in 2001 of training the drug cartel's paramilitary forces in terrorist tactics in the late 1980's. Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo told reporters August 28 that his government would rapidly file for his extradition so that Klein could serve out his ten-year-plus prison sentence in Colombia.

Reopening investigations into Yair Klein, his Spearhead Ltd. ("Hod Hadanit") "counterterrorism" security company, and his sponsors is not only crucial for defeating the drug mafia in Colombia, but can shed light on the overlapping intelligence and arms-and-drug-trafficking mafia which are key today to Dick Cheney's drive for permanent war in South West Asia.

Klein was up to his eyeballs in the infamous 1980's "Iran-Contras" arms for drugs trafficking operation of George Bush, Sr., Elliot Abrams, Israeli Gen. Revaham Ze'evi, et al. As that operation was exposed, Klein began receiving money from a U.S. State Department operation set up by Abrams to train a Panamanian "contra" force against Gen. Manuel Noriega in the run-up to the December 1989 invasion of Panama.

Simultaneously, Klein was arming and training Medellin cocaine cartel kingpin Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha and his hit squads, which later evolved into the Colombian "paramilitaries." Weapons traced back to Yair Klein were used in the August 18, 1989 assassination of Luis Carlos Galan, the popular anti-drug candidate who was heading toward victory in the 1990 Presidential elections. Galan's assassination sealed Colombia's fate as a bastion of the drug trade which has yet to be broken.

Informed of Klein's arrest, Sen. Juan Manuel Galan, Luis Carlos's son, said that Klein's extradition could prove historic, and ensure that those responsible for killing his father do not remain protected.