Cartel_leadeCartel leaders could be targeted abroad Cartel leaders could be targeted abroad

AlArabiya English

President Donald Trump called Mexican drug cartels “terrorists” which could change the means to fight them and allow the US military to target their leaders abroad, former assistant director to the FBI Frank Figliuzzi says.

Transcript

00:00Frank, first of all, let's start with an important message from Trump's speech.

00:07He declared Mexican cartels as terrorists.

00:11What do you make of this?

00:12And what did you make of the speech we just watched?

00:15Well, we certainly have some nuggets there that tell us where things are going, and we'll

00:21go quickly, that we should pay attention to from a national security front.

00:25And as you mentioned, the designation of drug cartels, unnamed right now, but we do recognize

00:32certain large cartels in the U.S. government that will be designated as terrorist organizations.

00:38That unleashes quite a bit of the toolkit of law enforcement and even the military,

00:45and this is where we should pay special attention, undesignated terrorist organizations.

00:50So if he's going to designate, say, for example, the Sinaloa cartel as a terrorist organization,

00:57that means we could treat them as hostile combatants.

01:01You could literally see the U.S. military targeting for assassination leadership of

01:07drug cartels in other sovereign nations.

01:12That would be quite interesting.

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