The Moscow Times
Thursday, March 17, 2005. Issue 3126. Page 3.
18 Suspected Arms Smugglers Were ‘Amateurs’
By Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writer
U.S. Attorney’s Office / AP
Photographs released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday showing
Russian military weapons that it said were to be smuggled into the United
States.
The 18 suspects in a plot to smuggle portable anti-aircraft missiles and
grenade launchers into the United States were most likely amateur
opportunists caught in a sting operation, experts on Russian organized crime
and arms proliferation said Wednesday.
U.S. Attorney David Kelly and FBI Special Agent Andy Arena told a news
conference in New York on Tuesday that authorities had arrested and charged
18 individuals with smuggling weapons into the country from the former
Soviet Union.
Five suspects were charged with conspiring to smuggle RPG anti-tank grenade
launchers and anti-aircraft Strela missiles, while the rest were charged
with smuggling machine guns and other weapons. Strela missiles and modified
versions of the grenade launchers could be used to shoot down commercial
airliners — a threat that last month prompted the United States and Russia
to sign an accord curbing the proliferation of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft
missiles.
Most of those arrested were from former Soviet countries, U.S. media
reported, while investigators identified Armenian Artur Solomonyan, 25, and
South African Christiaan Dewet Spies, 33, as the ringleaders.
Investigators said the two planned to travel to the former Soviet Union and
deliver missiles to an FBI informer, who had posed as an arms buyer on
behalf of al-Qaida, the Los Angeles Times reported.
U.S. media reported variously that the weapons were to have been obtained
from federal military arsenals in Chechnya, or from Armenia, Georgia and
Ukraine.
In a yearlong sting operation, the FBI informer bought only Kalashnikov, Uzi
and other assault rifles from the suspects, but discussed purchasing a
further $2.5 million-worth of missiles and other weapons. He also promised
to provide the smugglers with green cards to re-enter the United States.
Investigators said the informer had taped conversations with the suspects in
which Solomonyan offered to sell him enriched uranium, suggesting it could
be used to build a dirty bomb for detonation on the New York subway, Russian
media reported. But Kelly said none of the defendants appeared to have links
to terrorist groups.
The FBI informer had previously worked with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, helping to bust gunrunners in Miami, the New York Post
reported.
“On the whole, this looks pretty small-scale and opportunistic,” said Mark
Galeotti, director of the Organized Russian & Eurasian Crime Research Unit
at Britain’s Keele University, by telephone Wednesday.
“Serious criminals” do not make unsolicited offers to sell uranium, Galeotti
said, adding that in any case, “the United States has a very healthy
underground firearms economy of its own.”
He said that professional terrorists would be looking to acquire the latest
Igla and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, rather than Soviet-designed
Strelas, as leading airlines would soon be ready to deploy passive defense
systems on their airplanes.
Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center
for Defense Information, said the case looked similar to that of British
businessman Hemant Lakhani, who was suspected of offering to sell a
shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile to a U.S. buyer last year. Lakhani has
denied any wrongdoing and maintained he was trapped in a sting operation.