In July 2021, in compliance with an arrest warrant issued by the Attorney General’s Office, the Dijin and Interpol of the National Police, the capture of the Australian citizen Osemah Elhassen was confirmed, who due to an extradition request by a court in the Southern District of California was sent on a DEA plane in the last few hours to the United States.
This fact was registered after the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, will authorize the extradition through resolution 068 of 2023, with which the Australian citizen, who is accused of operating from Bogotá and Medellín a system of encrypted communications with which he facilitated the work of drug traffickers from at least seven countries so that they could move their cargoes without the authorities discovering it.
The extradition request was enabled on behalf of the Anom file, which is being processed by the Court for the Southern District of California, because Elhassen camouflaged himself in Colombia to operate contacts with several drug lords in the United States, Turkey, Thailand, Australia , Sweden and Spain, who used the services offered by the Australian citizen through the dismantled company.
In the same way, the newspaper El Colombiano detailed aspects of the federal file on Osemah Elhassen; that would have controlled the system for two years in Colombian territory, in addition to encrypting communications in which the movements of drugs, weapons and money were organized by criminals, which is why the FBI deployed a transnational operation to capture the developers, including Elhassen.
Among the points that the authorities would have discovered regarding the program, it is highlighted that this would have been created with the help of members of the Federal Police of Australia, the native country of the now extradited, from which the Clan del Golfo and the dissidents of the FARC in Colombia; Therefore, the average fee that the capos and organizations had to pay for six months would be between 1,5000 and 2,000 dollars, having around 9,500 points of this encrypted system.
“Anom company managers, distributors, and agents described their devices to their customers as ‘designed by criminals for criminals,’ and directed their sales to people who knew, or had reason to know, that they were involved in illegal activities, including international drug trafficking and money laundering”, indicates one of the pages that a federal court in the United States has against the Australian citizen.
The Australian Federal Police revealed that only the most powerful criminals had access to the system, so those who wanted to acquire these services had to access through another that was already associated, so this secrecy made the work to arrest the programmers even more difficult during transnational operations; For the same reason, the identity of the criminals in question who used it in Colombia is unknown.
The location of Elhassen and more than 500 members of the organization was discovered through a messaging platform, so the data and information that was shared by this tool was known by the United States authorities that were operating covertly.
Despite the fact that the capture of Osemah Elhassen was registered in July 2021, it was not until February 22, 2023 that the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court accepted the transfer of the Australian citizen to the United States, which was filed in March and was authorized by President Gustavo Petro. with Infobae