Colombia compared with the Region’s three borders, relatively little Islamic terrorist activity has been reported in Colombia, if this first research is any indication. The occasional presence of a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist in Colombia has been reported. These may have been people trying to visit to the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia (FARC) or travel to Maicao, Colombia, or at Isla Margarita, Venezuela, where there is significant Arab communities. Mohamed Abed Abdel Aal, a leader of the affiliates to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad al-Qaeda (Jamaa Islamiyya), was arrested in Colombia in October 1998. He had been in Italy under surveillance, according to Colonel German Jaramillo Piedrahita, the head of police intelligence of Colombia, who was interviewed by Radio Caracol from Colombia on October 21, 1998.
Abdel Aal is wanted by the Egyptian authorities for his involvement in two terrorist of tourist killings: Jamaa Islamiyya attack bomber in Luxor, Egypt on 17 November 1997, in which 62 people were killed, and in connection with an incident in which terrorists killed 20 tourists Greek by raking with shots of firearms outside his hotel in Cairo on April 18, 1996. On 22 December 1999, the Iranian Embassy in Bogota announced that Tehran has suspended the construction of a cold storage plant and slaughterhouse in the DMZ in Colombia. The Colombian Defense Minister, Luis Fernando Ramirez had expressed concern at the end of November from Iranian military advisers who were part of the group to install the slaughterhouse, and that these Iranians were connected in some way to the Farc, which controlled the demilitarized zone. An Iranian delegation first visited the area in June 1999, and an agreement between the local government and the Islamic Republic was signed October 21, raising immediate suspicions approaches of the installation of a plant of large capacity in an area that may not comply with export requirements.