Mail&Guardian Online
Thursday, March 17, 2005 12:56 PM

SA officials liaise on US arms arrest

Jenni Evans | Johannesburg, South Africa

17 March 2005 11:42

South Africa’s police and Department of Foreign Affairs officials are
liaising on the reported arrest of a South African in New York on
weapons-smuggling charges, police said on Thursday.

National police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said they are waiting
for further information, and the Department of Foreign Affairs is expected
to release a statement on the matter later.

The United States embassy is also still gathering information on the
arrests, said its spokesperson, Judy Moon.

According to reports, Christiaan Dewet Spies was arrested with at least 17
other people in an FBI undercover operation at a hotel in Manhattan, New
York, earlier this week.

The reports said Spies (33) and an Armenian, Artur Solomonyan, as well as a
number of others allegedly conspired to transport weapons of war.

The informant was reportedly a South African living in Texas and was
arrested when he was delivering green cards to enable the team to travel to
fetch the weapons.

The investigation included about 15 000 wire taps.

Spies reportedly entered the US on a tourist visa in 1999 and was appealing
a deportation order that came after his arrest on a drug-possession charge.

Weapons involved
Although it is not clear exactly which weapons were involved, reports
referred to rocket-propelled grenades and surface-to-air missiles, as well
as links with Russia.

A researcher at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) said these weapons
are designed to bring down low-flying aircraft.

“They could be surplus weapons from Eastern Europe and Russia,” said Sarah
Meek, head of the ISS arms-management programme.

Although these regions have signed commitments not to sell weapons
stockpiled in old armouries, they could have been obtained from a corrupt
official “selling through the back door”.

There did not immediately appear to be an African weapons connection apart
from Spies’s origin, she said.

“It looks like a motley crew of Armenian and Eastern Europeans.”

Regional weapons mopping-up programmes, such as Mozambique and South
Africa’s Operation Rachel, and the Angolan disarmament programme following
the resolution of years of civil war, appear to be successful.

There are still arms caches in Angola but there does not seem to be any
large-scale trafficking.

“There are individuals who will try to get around legislation … but
security agencies seem to be pretty much on top of it,” Meek said.

Referring to the recent arrests of South Africans relating to international
arms investigations, Meek said South Africa should not be singled out.

“You will always have someone doing it for money. It is a global network. If
you are there and you have the right contacts, you can get into it, it’s not
just South Africa.”

She added that if it wants to, the South African government can invoke the
National Convention on Arms Control Act, which prohibits illegal arms
brokering. The Act has extra-territorial powers and enables authorities to
arrest South Africans internationally.

Armscor, Denel check records
Arms-procurement agency Armscor said it ran a human-resources check on Spies
in response to media enquiries and found no record of him.

“We pulled all the records and we don’t know such a person,” Armscor
spokesperson Billy Nell said.

Denel spokesperson Sam Basch said Denel is currently going through the human
resource and pension records at all its subsidiaries for mention of the man
who carries the name of a Boer war general.

Spies reportedly remains in US custody.

Recently, two Randburg engineering-company directors were arrested on
charges of possessing components for weapons of mass destruction, allegedly
linked to Libya’s now-abandoned nuclear-weapons programme.

In another unrelated matter, a group of South Africans is waiting to be
released from a Zimbabwe jail after being sentenced to 12 months for
breaching Zimbabwe’s aviation, immigration, firearm and security laws.

This related to an alleged coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea and also saw
Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, pay a
R3-million fine in South Africa for his part in arranging the aircraft for
the mission. — Sapa