The Messenger
Friday, March 18, 2005, #049 (0823)
Smuggling scheme broken in FBI sting
Arrest of four Georgians in U.S. leads to calls for greater vigilance on
Georgia’s borders
By James Phillips
PHOTO
Georgian Ioseb Kharabadze,
pictured on Tuesday being led
handcuffed by FBI agents in New
York, is one of four Georgians
accused of smuggling illegal arms
into the United States
Four Georgian nationals were among the eighteen people arrested in the
United States on Tuesday on charges of conspiring to smuggle thousands of
Russian weapons into the country.
Georgians Ioseb Kharabadze, 52, Nikolai Nadirashvili, 25, Levan Chvelidze,
28, and Vato Machitadze, 26, have all been arrested as members of an arms
smuggling ring plotting to illegally import antitank weapons, surface-to-air
missiles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and machine guns into the
United States.
The arrests followed a two-year sting operation in which an FBI informant
who is a South African munitions expert posed as an arms buyer with ties to
al-Qaeda.
U.S. Attorney David Kelley said the operation had “disrupted a potential
overseas pipeline for dangerous military weaponry to come into the hands of
civilians or even terrorists.”
The FBI says the ring delivered eight automatic weapons to storage sheds in
Los Angeles, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
They also schemed to smuggle Russian weapons into the country, including
rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Strela SA-7b surface-to-air
shoulder-launched missiles.
The ringleaders, Artur Solomonyan, 26, an Armenian who lives in New York,
and Christiaan Dewet Spies, 33, a South African, were busted in a Battery
Park City hotel as they prepared to leave for Eastern Europe to carry out
the shipment of the arms, law enforcement officials said.
They could face up to thirty years imprisonment if convicted, the New York
Post reports.
The sting operation involved the interception of some 15,000 phone calls. In
one tapped call, Solomonyan says he has contacts with ex-Chechen military
members, ex-KGB members and rogue members of the Russian military who could
smuggle him weapons.
In another phone call, he states that the weapons would be shipped from
Georgia to Leninakan, a city in Armenia.
The suggestion that the Russian arms would transit through Georgia prompted
Minister of Foreign Affairs Salome Zourabichvili to call on Wednesday for
Georgian control of the Roki tunnel connecting South and North Ossetia.
The minister said she shared the opinion of the American special services
that the attempt to smuggle weapons into the United States demonstrated the
need for central Georgian control of the whole of its border, including the
Roki tunnel.
“Whether the weapons were imported from Georgia or transited through its
territory I don’t know,” she said.
“Georgia has repeatedly declared the necessity of establishing Georgian
control over the Roki tunnel and other parts of its border. This is
evidently necessary. The control is necessary for both Georgia and countries
of possible destination,” she stressed.
Meanwhile, speaking on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Richard Miles
stated, according to Black Sea Press, that, “Georgia, Armenia and other
countries whose nationals are suspected of arms smuggling have expressed
satisfaction with the work of the investigating bodies and are closely
collaborating with us.”
The ambassador confirmed that “Georgian nationals Nikoloz Nadirashvili, Vato
Machitadze,
Iosif Kharabadze, and Levan Shvelidze have been detained,” and added that
Kharabadze could face up to five years imprisonment, while the others could
receive fifteen year sentences.