An Italian anti-Mafia prosecutor wants to make marijuana use legal in an effort to cut off profits for ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) streaming in from its drug trafficking through Libya, according to an article posted on Wednesday by Barbie Latza Nadeau, Rome bureau chief for the liberal Daily Beast website.
“It's well known that ISIS leaders are are punishing those who use recreational drugs, which is against their peculiar version of sharia law,” Nadeau noted. “But the terror group apparently doesn’t have a problem with pushing those same drugs for profit -- which is why it's been teaming up with the Sicilian Mafia to cash in on the lucrative trade.”
“That’s also why Italy’s chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, Franco Roberti, wants to legalize cannabis and hash, not just in Italy, but throughout Europe,” the bureau chief reported.
The main smuggling route for North African hash -- compressed cannabis resin -- now runs from Casablanca, Morocco, through Algeria, Tunisia, to Tobruk in eastern Libya, Roberti said. Along that route is the seaside city of Sirte, which now serves as a Mediterranean base for the most powerful ISIS branch outside Syria and Iraq.
“Decriminalization or even legalization would definitely be a weapon against traffickers, among whom there could be terrorists who make money off of it,” Roberti told Reuters in a wide-ranging interview this week.
“The prosecutor, who also heads Italy’s anti-terrorism investigations, has just written a book, The Opposite of Fear, that outlines the similarities and links between organized crime syndicates and terrorist organizations like the so-called Islamic State,” Nadeau stated.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government gave Roberti's office, which has coordinated the national fight against organized crime since the early 1990s, the job of overseeing investigations into terrorism in February last year.
Roberti asserted that both organizations use the same criminal playbook: “International terrorism finances itself with criminal activities that are typical of the Mafia,” he wrote in his book. “Like drug trafficking, smuggling commercial goods, smuggling oil, smuggling archaeological relics and art, [and] kidnapping for ransom and extortion.”
The prosecutor has long held that Italy’s fight against organized crime could help lead the battle against ISIS, which ”is, in effect, a mafia state; it has all the features,” he said when presenting Italy’s National Anti Mafia Directorate annual report in March.
“The Islamic State is a transnational Mafia organization, which uses external organizations for smuggling [and] drug trafficking -- in this case, the Mafia,” the prosecutor indicated.
“He says the Sicilian Mafia, also called the Cosa Nostra, has had no choice but to partner with ISIS to continue to use the Libyan coastline for its high-stakes smuggling business,” Nadeau noted.
“Certainly, [ISIS] controls the Libya route,” Roberti told Reuters. “It controls the coast along the Gulf of Sirte.”
“That coastline is the main conduit for the Cosa Nostra to channel drugs into Italy and throughout Europe, an operation that nets the mob some $36 billion a year,” according to the United Nations Office on Narcotics and Crime.
According to a recent report, ISIS has had to beef up trades like drug trafficking to make up for a 30 percent loss in income as people who would generally pay taxes flee the region.
“The Islamic State has lost about 22 percent of its territory in the past 15 months,” analyst Columb Strack said. “Its population has declined from around 9 million to around 6 million. There are fewer people and business activities to tax; the same applies to properties and land to confiscate.” However, “Libya is not the only country where ISIS deals drugs,” Nadeau stated. The terrorist organization “is also buying up hashish from Lebanon to help fund its battle in Syria.”
Facing the huge challenges of fighting people smuggling, cocaine trafficking, and international terrorism, investigators are spending too much time and energy to combat cannabis dealers, and to little effect, said Roberti, who has been combating the mafia for more than three decades.
“If the lucrative black-market sale of cannabis and hash were decriminalized, he argues that it would cut off a valuable resource of revenue for the terrorists and for the Mafia, the bureau chief noted.
"We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking. On the contrary, it's increasing," said Roberti, who has been combating the mafia for more than three decades.
Cannabis is “much less damaging than hard or synthetic drugs,” which should not be decriminalized, he said. But Italy's laws against selling or growing cannabis are severe and can lead to imprisonment.
Liberals are often looking for a way to legalize both the recreational and medical uses of marijuana, which can become a “gateway drug” to such harsh substances as heroin and cocaine. Except in states like Colorado and Washington, of course.
