(WMR) -- Peruvian police have rounded up an Israeli-led cocaine smuggling ring, according to the Peruvian Ministry of the Interior and Reuters.

On December 2, Peruvian police confiscated over a half ton of cocaine bound for Europe and Israel from Lima and Chorillos. In October, more sizable amounts of cocaine from the same criminal syndicate were seized by police in the Bahamas and Spain.

Peruvian police believe the cocaine ring�s leader is Israeli national Moris Abdelhak, aka �The Welder,� who was arrested last nobth in Peru. Abdelhak, whose residence is Kiryat Yam, Israel, specialized in hiding cocaine in machinery that was then sent to phony companies either via land route to Chile and then by sea to Europe and Haifa or by air directly from Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima. Some of the cocaine shipped to Israel was transported via an additional smuggling route to Jordan.

Four Peruvian citizens have also been arrested in the cocaine bust in Peru. Israeli police are still looking for the top ring leader, Moshe El-Garbli, a former soccer player from Magdim who uses the name �The Referee.� Last month, Israeli police arrested 10 Israelis in an investigation of the cocaine ring that shipped the drugs into Haifa in shipping containers.

On October 11, 2006, Estonian police arrested four Israelis tied to the cocaine smuggling ring. Nahum Yaron Kahana, Meir Shushan, Shimon Yaloz, and Moshe Moris Benyamin were arrested for trying to smuggle cocaine into Tallinn hidden in a gearwheel shipped from Lima. Benyamin, 63, reportedly suffered a �brain stroke� while in custody and he was released to relatives who took him back to Israel.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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