Much has been written on the relative irrelevance of Latin America to the United States since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, due to its lack of importance to America’s strategic interests. So whenever something like this article from conservative Argentine daily La Nación catches my eye, on the entry of 26 individuals linked with the the Islamic fundamentalist movement Jamaat Tabligh (which has in turn been linked to Al Qaeda), I wonder whether that’s necessarily a permanent condition.

According to intelligence sources, it seems, the purpose of this group’s activities in Argentina is the recruitment of individuals potentially sympathetic to its cause from Argentina’s 700,000-strong Islamic community.

A translation of one passage reveals a disregard for civil rights that I shouldn’t find surprising:

The federal authorities’ strategy from the beginning has been to let the Jamaat Tabligh militants know that they were being closely watched. For that reason … seven individuals with passports from Qatar and two with Egyptian passports were detained on July 22nd in Balcarce and Laprida, in the province of Buenos Aires. Five days later, four Malaysians belonging to the Jamaat Tabligh movement were arrested and detained for several hours in Cordoba. The purpose was never to keep them in custody, since they did not break the law, but to make them feel that they were under state surveillance.

Finally, the article suggests a further reason why:

With antiterrorist surveillance sensitized by the approach of the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata [Argentina], which will take place this November, the presence of the groups from Jamaat Tabligh in Laprida and in Bahía Blanca led to an official reaction to put them under pressure.

This summit will host heads of state from virtually every country in the Americas, including U.S. president George W. Bush. Fear of inadequacy of security measures on the part of the American delegation have in fact been a fairly frequent subject of discussion in the press in recent months.