South Florida man charged with supplying weapons to Colombian terrorist group
In the first criminal case of its kind, a South Florida man was charged Wednesday with providing “material support” including weapons to a U.S.-designated terrorist group in Colombia known as the ELN.
Francisco Joseph Arcila Ramirez, who is a legal permanent resident in the United States, pleaded not guilty in Miami federal court Wednesday to conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organization and related firearms-smuggling charges.
His defense attorney, Ana Davide, said after Arcila’s brief appearance that they were starting to review the evidence and declined further comment.
A previous indictment had charged Arcila and two other South Florida men with conspiring to buy pistols, semiautomatic rifles and other arms from licensed weapons dealers and secretly shipping them in air compressors to Colombia during the past year.
But the earlier indictment did not allege the weapons ended up in the hands of the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish initials, ELN, nor was there any mention of supporting the foreign terrorist group.
Colombian authorities have accused the ELN, which was founded in 1964 as a leftist rebel group, of carrying out the January truck bombing of a national police academy in Bogotá that killed 21 people and wounded more than 70 others. The ELN has been expanding its profile as a criminal organization while capitalizing on the drug trade and kidnapping ransoms after the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) struck a peace deal in 2016 and became a political party.
There is no indication that the weapons illegally shipped from South Florida to Colombia played a part in the deadly Bogotá bombing, authorities said. However, Colombian investigators are conducting a separate probe of weapons suppliers to the ELN, including Arcila’s brother and several others.
Details of the South Florida firearms-smuggling case were disclosed in two related criminal complaints filed in January. They said two of the defendants — Arcila and Gregory Fernando Ortega, who live in Broward County — used a straw buyer to purchase dozens of firearms from Miami-area gun stores such as Lou’s Police Supply and then shipped them hidden inside Husky air compressors to Arcila’s brother in Colombia. Among the purchases: Glock, Draco and Zastava pistols, the complaints said.
In mid-March, Ortega pleaded guilty to conspiring to illegally deal firearms.
Last fall, the straw buyer began cooperating with agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and recorded conversations about the weapon transactions and shipments to Colombia, according to the complaints filed by federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin.
The straw buyer, James Smith, plans to plead guilty on April 16, according to court records.
In October, Ortega admonished the straw buyer not to “say anything about him” to federal agents about the firearms they had purchased. Ortega also instructed the straw buyer to lie to ATF&E agents that the “firearms were stolen” and that is why the buyer no longer had them in his possession, according to court documents.
The following month, Ortega told the straw buyer that the agents would not be able to trace any of the weapons because the “serial numbers were scratched off.”
Ortega also told him that he was concerned about Arcila “getting caught.” Arcila arranged the firearms shipments and traveled to Colombia in the fall, according to the complaints.
In Colombia, the national police arrested Arcila’s brother, Alvaro Jay Arcila, and his wife, Ingrid Maldonado Perez, in Barranquilla. In a search of the couple’s home in October, police found assorted firearms parts and accessories, along with four Husky air compressors. One of the compressors had a Home Depot identifier tag with a store inventory number, which was traced by federal agents to the Home Depot store on Southwest Eighth Street in Little Havana.
Arcila had bought the compressors at that Home Depot store in September, according to surveillance video footage. He then shipped them to his brother in Colombia.
This story was originally published April 3, 2019 at 5:46 PM.
